He was checked. It was Baird's hand which clutched his arm now--it seemed as if for support. The man was swaying a little, and in the light of a street-lamp near them he looked up in a ghastly appeal. "Latimer," he said. "Don't go on; you see I can't bear it. I am not so strong as I was--before I began this work. I have lost my nerve. You bring it before me as it is brought before yourself. I am living the thing. I can't bear it." Latimer came back from the past. He made an effort to understand and control himself. "Yes," he said, quite dull; "that was what the woman I spoke of told me--that she lived the thing again. It is not sane to let one's self go back. I beg your pardon, Baird." CHAPTER XXXIV "It's a curious job, that De Willoughby claim," was said in a committee-room of the House, one day. "It's beginning to attract attention because it has such an innocent air. The sharp ones say that may be the worst feature of it, because ingenuousness is more dangerous than anything else if a job is thoroughly rotten. The claimants are the most straightforward pair the place has ever seen--a big, humourous, well-mannered country man, and a boy of twenty-three. Rutherford, of Hamlin County, who is a monument of simplicity in himself, is heart and soul in the thing--and Farquhar feels convinced by it. Farquhar is one of the men who are not mixed up with jobs. Milner himself is beginning to give the matter a glance now and then, though he has not committed himself; and now the Reverend John Baird, the hero of the platform, is taking it up." Baird had proved his incidental offer of aid to have been by no means an idle one. He had been obliged to absent himself from Washington for a period, but he had returned when his lecture tour had ended, and had shown himself able in a new way. He was the kind of man whose conversation people wish to hear. He chose the right people and talked to them about the De Willoughby claim. He was interesting and picturesque in connection with it, and lent the topic attractions. Tom had been shrewdly right in saying that his talk of it would give it a chance. He went often to the house near the Circle. Latimer did not go with him, and had himself explained his reasons to big Tom. "I have seen her," he said. "It is better that I should not see her often. She is too much like her mother."