efforts of the Plain People, would go to—not to Tophet, as one might have expected from the tone, but to—Damascus! But he would champion their rights; he would be heard; he would not heed the ostentatious reference of the gentleman from Cherokee to his watch. Why, he could tell the speaker that these same influential men had their personal representation in this House. A member confessed to him that because one of these little great men wanted a thing it had to go through this General Assembly. “And so his mouthpiece repeats his wish, his tool does his will!” A murmur arose. Kinsard was on his feet in an instant. “Mr. Speaker,” he thundered, “the member means _me_!” There was sudden silence. He stood at his full height, his head thrown back, his brilliant eyes fixed angrily on Harshaw. Harshaw was dumfounded. He had expected Kinsard to quake silently and secretly under the lash; to quiver in terror lest his identity be hinted. This open avowal had routed him. He was in an ill-humor, but he had no desire to seriously attack Kinsard on a point like this. He wanted to punish him, to intimidate him; to threaten that most sensitive possession of the young and spirited, his reputation, or, as Kinsard would have phrased it, his “sacred honor.” He had the usual contempt of a man of forty for youth,—its self-assertion, its domineering. He intended the chance allusion as discipline. He had fallen under his own lash. He stood in dismay as Kinsard reiterated, “He means _me_!” There was a general laugh; the imputation, in view of his character, his prominence, his wealth, his very eye, was so absurd. “But,”—Kinsard’s tones were grandiloquent,—“in view of the publicity of this charge, I consider that I am wounded in my reputation, and I demand reparation.” “I can make no formal retraction,” said Harshaw, hastily, “for I have imputed no discredit, except being easily dominated.” Kinsard fixed upon him a look of amazement. He turned again to the chair. “Mr. Speaker,” he said, “the member from the floterial district of Cherokee and Kildeer”—he sedulously avoided the word “gentleman”—“labors under a mistake. I do not demand the retraction of a word. Perhaps he will understand this token.” He took his glove, and cast it in the open space before the speaker’s desk. Only a nineteenth-century kid glove, with two porcelain buttons at the wrist, but it was flung down with as splendid and gallant a gesture as if it were a gauntlet of mail. The old fellows, who had outlived folly such as this, were grinning at the revival of their ancient manners. The younger men, profiting by the traditions of their elders, were grave and quivering with excitement. Harshaw was in a quandary, conscious of being ridiculous in the eyes of one class, and of being defied in the eyes of the other. He would not do so absurd a thing as to lift Kinsard’s glove. Yet with the significance of the “token” he was ashamed to let it lie. And the speaker had a big job on his hands.