rested for failures?"

"Cowards!" rejoined Doctor Ward. "Cowards, every one of them! Were there
not other swords upon which they might have fallen--those of their
enemies?"

"It is not my own hand--my own sword, Sam," said Calhoun. "Not that. You
know as well as I that I am already marked and doomed, even as I sit at
my table to-night. A walk of a wet night here in Washington--a turn
along the Heights out there when the winter wind is keen--yes, Sam, I
see my grave before me, close enough; but how can I rest easy in that
grave? Man, we have not yet dreamed how great a country this may be. We
_must_ have Texas. We _must_ have also Oregon. We must have--"

"Free?" The old doctor shrugged his shoulders and smiled at the arch
pro-slavery exponent.

"Then, since you mention it, yes!" retorted Calhoun fretfully. "But I
shall not go into the old argument of those who say that black is white,
that South is North. It is only for my own race that I plan a wider
America. But then--" Calhoun raised a long, thin hand. "Why," he went on
slowly, "I have just told you that I have failed. And yet you, my old
friend, whom I ought to trust, condemn me to live on!"

Doctor Samuel Ward took snuff again, but all the answer he made was to
waggle his gray mane and stare hard at the face of the other.

"Yes," said he, at length, "I condemn you to fight on, John;" and he
smiled grimly.