"Yes, I know," said Galt. "Hello, Bassett," as Tom Bassett joined him. "Where've you been? Lost sight of you this morning." "Oh, I was out with the Committee on Credentials. A member? I should say not. I wanted to hear that Madison County case, so I got made sergeant-at-arms. By the way, Dick," to Dickson, "I hear you held the floor for five minutes this morning and got off five distinct stories that landed with Columbus." "Nonsense. I didn't open my mouth--except to call 'time' on the men who did. There's our orator now." He bowed to an elderly gentleman with a sharply pointed chin beard and the type of face that was once called clerical. "Some one defined oratory the other day," said Galt, "as the fringe with which the inhabitants of the Southern States still delighted to trim their politics--so I should call the gentleman of to-day 'a political tassel.' He's ornamental and he hangs by a thread." And he passed into the lobby arm-in-arm with Tom Bassett. The place was swarming with delegates: delegates from country districts, red-faced farmers in flapping linen coats and wide-brimmed hats; delegates from the cities, dapper, well-groomed, cordial-voiced; delegates of the true political type, shaven, obsequious, alert; delegates of the cast that belongs at home, outspoken, honest-eyed, remote; stout delegates, with half-bursting waistbands, thin delegates, with shrunken chests. In the animated throng there was but one condition held in common--they were all heated delegates. In one corner a stout gentleman in a thin coat, with a scarlet neck showing above his wilted collar, held a half-dozen listeners with his eyes, while he plied them with emphatic sentences in which the name of Crutchfield sounded like a refrain. Moving from group to group, portly, unctuous, insinuating, a man with an oily voice was doing battle in the cause of Webb. The throng that passed in and out of the lobby was continually shifting place and principles. One instant it would seem that Crutchfield triumphed in a majority sufficient to overwhelm the platform; a moment more and the Webb men were vociferously in the ascendant. At the time it resolved itself into a question of tongues. "This is thick," said Ben Galt, dodging the straw hat with which a perspiring politician was fanning himself and gently withdrawing himself from the arms of a scarlet individual in a wet collar to collide with his double. "Let's go to dinner. Ah! there's the Lion of Democracy--how are you, Judge?"