blood and that of the wife and mother who had gone before would turn
traitor to his colors in the very thickest of the fray.




CHAPTER III

HOW TO PLEASE A SENATOR


The International Hotel in Washington was all hustle and bustle. Was
it not preparing for its first Senator since 1885? No less a personage
than the Hon. William H. Langdon of Mississippi, said to be a warm
personal friend of Senator Stevens, one of the leading members of his
party at the capital, had engaged a suit of rooms for himself and two
daughters.

"Ain't it the limit?" remarked the chief clerk to Bud Haines,
correspondent of the New York _Star_. "The Senator wrote us that he
was coming here because his old friend, the late Senator Moseley, said
back in '75 that this was the best hotel in Washington and where all
the prominent men ought to stay."

Haines, the ablest political reporter in Washington, had come to the
International to interview the new Senator, to describe for his paper
what kind of a citizen Langdon was. He glanced around at the dingy
woodwork, the worn cushions, the nicked and uneven tiles of the hotel
lobby, and smiled at the clerk. "Well, if this is the new Senator's
idea of princely luxury he will fit right into the senatorial