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“No, I reckon not, if you say so.”

“Certainly not,” said Barrett briskly. “Why of course, we’d never have thought of making you a money offer to vote either for or against your principles. Not much! We don’t do business that way! We simply want to do something for you. We’ve wanted to, all during the session, but the opportunity hadn’t offered until I happened to hear your son was in trouble.”

Out of the shadow came a long, tremulous sigh. There was a moment’s pause; then Uncle Billy’s head sank slowly lower and rested on his hands.

“You see,” the other continued cheerfully, “we make no conditions, none in the world. We feel friendly to you and want to oblige you, but of course we do think you ought to show a little good-will towards us. I believe it’s all understood: to-morrow night Mr. Watson will drive out in his buggy to this Johnson place, and he’s empowered by us to settle the whole business and obtain a written statement from the family that they have no claim on your son. How he will settle it is neither your affair nor mine; nor whether it costs money or not. But he will settle it. We do that out of good-will to you, as long as we feel as friendly to you as we do now, and all we ask is that you show your good-will to us.”

It was plain, even to Uncle Billy, that if he voted against Mr. Barrett’s friends in the afternoon those friends might not feel so much good-will toward him in the evening as they did now: and Mr. Watson might not go to the trouble of hitching up his buggy to drive out to the Johnsons’.

“You see, it’s all out of friendship,” said Barrett, his hand on the door knob. “And we can count on your’s to-morrow, can’t we–absolutely?”

The grey head sank a little lower, and then after a moment the quavering voice answered:

“Yes, sir–I’ll be friendly.”

Before morning, Hurlbut lost another vote. One of his best men left on a night train for the bedside of his dying wife. This meant that the “Breaker” needed every one of the fifty-one remaining Democratic votes in order to pass. Hurlbut more than distrusted Pixley, yet he felt sure of the other fifty, and if, upon the reading of the bill, Pixley proved false, the bill would not be lost, since there would be a majority of votes in its favour, though not the constitutional majority of fifty-one required for its passage, and it could be brought up again and carried when the absent man returned. Thus, on the chance that Pixley had withstood tampering, Hurlbut made no effort to prevent the bill from coming to the floor in its regular order in the afternoon, feeling that it could not possibly be killed by a majority against it, for he trusted his fifty, now, as strongly as he distrusted Pixley.

And so the roll-call on the “Breaker” began, rather quietly, though there was no man’s face in the hall that was not set to show the tensity of high-strung nerves. The great crowd that had gathered and choked the galleries and the floor beyond the bar, and the Senators who had left their own chamber to watch the bill in the House, all began to feel disappointed; for nothing happened until Pixley’s name was called.

Pixley voted “No!”

Uncle Billy, sitting far down in his leather chair on the small of his back, heard the outburst of shouting that followed; but he could not see Pixley, for the traitor was instantly surrounded by a ring of men, and all that was visible from where he sat was their backs and upraised, gesticulating hands. Uncle Billy began to tremble violently; he had not calculated on this; but surely such things would not happen to him!

The Speaker’s gavel clicked through the uproar and the roll-call proceeded.