The caller threw himself into a chair and rolled a fat, unlighted cigar
about in his mouth. "You're a peach, all right, and as offensively hale
and handsome as ever. When are you going to the ranch?"

"Well, not just immediately; I want to sample the flesh-pots for a day or
two."

"You're getting soft,--that's what's the matter with you! You're afraid
of the spring zephyrs on the Montana range. Well, I'll admit that it's
rather more diverting here."

"There is no debating that, Senator. How do you like being a statesman?
It was so sudden and all that. I read an awful roast of you in an English
paper. They took your election to the Senate as another evidence of
the complete domination of our politics by the plutocrats."

Sanderson winked prodigiously.

"The papers _have_ rather skinned me; but on the whole, I'll do very
well. They say it isn't respectable to be a senator these days, but they
oughtn't to hold it up against a man that he's rich. If the Lord put
silver in the mountains of Montana and let me dig it out, it's nothing
against me, is it?"

"Decidedly not! And if you want to invest it in a senatorship it's the
Lord's hand again."

"Why sure!" and the Senator from Montana winked once more. "But it's
expensive. I've got to be elected again next winter--I'm only filling out