When the train paused for the Big Four crossing at Gardner, they heard in the sudden flood of silence the snoring of a sensible fare-paying passenger who had gone to bed. The strident noise of the crickets and the frogs outside was noted only as an effect of the silence. The three men had no thought of retiring until they reached Pontiac at two o’clock, for the lives they led were such that they could not sleep until that hour, and then not very well. Baldwin had lighted his imported cigar, the superior aroma of which, perceptible even in an atmosphere choked with coal gases and the fumes of the domestic cigars Jennings and Healy were smoking, indicated faintly the height of cultivation to which he had brought his appetites, when Jennings, flecking his ashes on the floor of the salon just as he would have done on his own parlor carpet, said: “Well, go on with the story.” Baldwin settled his chin over the blue cravat with the white polka dots that was knotted over the immaculate collar--a collar, incredulous men from southern Illinois were sometimes told, that was actually made on the shirt--drew his creased trousers a little farther above the tops of his patent leather boots, and began: “One session there was an old man named Henderson in the house, who had come up from Greene County; Henderson of Greene, everybody called him, to distinguish him from Tom Henderson, of Effingham. He was a queer figure, was Henderson of Greene, tall and gaunt, with a stoop in his shoulders. He always wore a hickory shirt, opened at a red and wrinkled throat, and his hair was just a stubble bleached by harvest suns. The old man was a riddle to everybody in Springfield that winter. He was always in his seat, even on Monday evenings, when no one else was there. He voted always with his party, and he voted consistently as well, like a good country member, against all the Chicago legislation. But he was a silent man, who stood apart from his fellows, looking with eyes that peered from under his shaggy, sunburned brows with an expression no one could fathom. He never made a speech, he never introduced a bill, he never offered a resolution, he never even presented a petition, and when the speaker made his committee assignments, he placed the old man on the committees on History, Geology and Science, and on Civil Service Reform, and he did not even look disappointed.” The two politicians chuckled.