Senator Kern was not eager for the task the senate had assigned him. It meant his practical withdrawal from all other senate activities for an indefinite period, and his concentration as in a case in court upon every word of evidence adduced. While morally positive of Lorimer’s guilt from the beginning, he was early convinced, and his sense of duty gradually forced him into greater and greater prominence as a developer of the case against the accused. A man of kindly instincts, he had never relished the rôle of a prosecutor, and in his private practice of his profession had seldom appeared except in defense in criminal cases. But once convinced of Lorimer’s guilt, he determined that every possible avenue of information tending to uncover what he considered a great crime against American institutions should be followed to the end. It was early whispered about and generally credited that the second investigation, like the first, would end in a white wash. Very early he was startled to find from their general attitude that the majority of the committee were apparently not impressed by what he considered overwhelming evidence of guilt. The honesty of this attitude he never questioned, but, convinced himself, he set himself to the task of developing the evidence along the line of his own conviction. This led him to the position he unquestionably held at the conclusion of the hearings as the leader in the fight for the unseating of the blond boss. II The line of cleavage on the committee was clear very soon after the hearings began. Feeling as he did early in the proceedings, that a majority of the committee would support a report favorable to the accused, Kern, intensely convinced of his guilt, keenly felt the responsibility which fell to him. This feeling was shared by two other members of the committee, Kenyon and Lea. It was during the period of the Lorimer hearing that the feeling of mutual respect and affection sprang up between the three men which continued until Senator Kern’s death. All three were new members of the senate, but Kern had a long career behind him and was more than sixty years old, while Kenyon and Lea were unusually young and comparatively new to public life. They were both of the same general type and this a type that strongly appealed to the older man--the clean-cut, buoyant, independent, courageous and incorruptible type, bubbling with the enthusiasms of youth, and ardently anxious to serve the country according to their light. Both were men of vigorous mentality, keen and alert and “spoiling for a fight” with such wrongs as might present themselves, and both were skilled lawyers and competent for the task assigned them. It was most natural that young men, new to the senate, and sharing in a desire to serve the people, should have drifted together; the fact that both drifted toward the veteran of sixty was wonderfully complimentary to the character of the older man. Their common hatred of political corruption,