"Yes, I am mighty sorry," the Senator was saying to Elkin and Miss Rodney, who sat upon their horses at the gate--"sorry as I ever was in my life, but my horse stuck a nail in his foot and can hardly walk. Of course I could get another horse, but take Felix out of the chase and the whole thing falls flat. And my best hound is sick, too. Sometimes it does seem that everything stands in the way. But we'll have it, now, very soon. Get down, and stay to dinner. Ah, Belford, you going? Well, I'll see you in a day or two." CHAPTER XVI. THE PLAY. I dreaded the embarrassment of meeting the Senator again; and it was with a sense of nervousness that I looked from my office window, the next morning, to see him getting out of his buggy. He came briskly up the stairs, spoke heartily to someone whom he met on the landing, halted at my open door, and, hat in hand, made me a sweeping bow. "Ha, early to work is the thing," he said, stepping into the room and glancing about. "More pictures of famous players, I see. Well, we'll have them strutting about our stage the first thing they know. How do you feel?" he asked, drawing up a chair and sitting down. "First rate--too well, I might say. This air makes me content to sit and dream." "Good; it is better to find contentment even in a dream than to snap our nerves in two with chasing what we might regard substantial happiness. Why, confound it all, Belford, there is no such thing as substantial happiness. Anything substantial is too material, too gross; and happiness is a certain spiritual condition of the mind. Therefore, I say, let the old South dream if she feels like it. There used to be an old fellow that lived about here--Mose Parish. Well, the time came for Mose to die; but he wasn't scared, not a bit of it. A preacher came to talk to him, and old Mose listened for a while, and then he said: 'Oh, no, I never did much of anything--never built a steamboat nor a house, but I've had a good deal of fun, and I hold that when a man is having fun he can't have it all alone; he's helping some other fellow.'" We talked about hundreds of things, and touched occasionally upon our business venture, but nothing led to a subject which I felt, and which he seemed to feel, was too delicate to be mentioned. He gossiped of young Elkin's affection for Miss Rodney; he said that Elkin's love put him in mind of an ass with gilded ears. He spoke of the coming election and the surety with which he and Tom Estell would win; but when he took his leave he did not invite me to call at the house. I met him day after day, in the office, in the street, in the rotunda of the hotel; and he always greeted me with a warm and earnest cordiality, but at parting he would say, "I'll see you again soon;" and never that I should come to see him.