Nevertheless, decorum and all outward observances were due to society, and indispensable. Acting on this principle, there was no more popular and respected young man at twenty-one, in Belton, than Rufus Heath, nor one with brighter prospects. Counsellor Hull, his patron, declared that the young lawyer promised to be an ornament to the profession; and when the Counsellor was called to the bench, Rufus Heath succeeded to his practice. Exempt from gross vices, and gifted with an elastic conscience, the thriving lawyer successfully pursued his calling, until his marriage with Miss Obershaw crowned his pecuniary prosperity. Now the influence of riches made itself manifest, and it almost seemed as if the precious metals had been injected into his veins. He stiffened, became cold and imperturbable, laid aside his urbanity, and his ill-concealed pride and contempt for the less prosperous betrayed itself. And now that he had tasted all the joys that affluence can give, and tasted them unto satiety, he craved the flattering unction of distinction. Ambition was now his god. He was a politician, but a successful one only so far as he had been assisted by his wealth and family connections. He owed it to these powerful auxiliaries that he had spent a term in Congress. But he had gained no prominence there. He lacked oratorical ability, and without it, it is scarcely possible to attain eminence in a republic. His daintiness, moreover, caused him to recoil from contact with the masses, and though he strove to overcome this repugnance when the occasion called for it, he had never entirely succeeded. Perseverance, intrigue, and a lavish expenditure of money, were the means he relied on to ascend the first steps of political preferment. Once fairly launched as a public man, he doubted not his ability to make his way and mark as a statesman or a diplomat. To become Governor of his State was his present aim, and he had laid his plans to secure the nomination from his party as a candidate at the next election. To this end a host of emissaries, with money at command, were at work throughout the State. The _Belton Sentinel_, the organ in the county of Mr. Heath's party, advocated his interest with tremendous energy, persistency, and abundance of adjectives. Finnegass, the editor, was a poor printer, whose shop, presses, types, and all were mortgaged to Rufus Heath. This well-known fact furnished an unfailing quantity of sarcasm to the _Passaic County Argus_, the opposition sheet, that invariably alluded to Finnegass as the "minion" or "serf," either "pampered" or "truckling," of the "aristocrat on the cliff." These amenities were treated by the editor of the _Sentinel_ with complete indifference, until once (stung into retorting by some particularly sharp gibe) he referred to the _Argus_ as an "obscure sheet of no circulation, edited by a low, ignorant felon." Obscurity and "no circulation" were accusations too atrocious to be borne, and the editor