did not come to him upon his mere and unsupported merits as a man. In
his own fashion, so far from being the philosopher he thought, Richard
was a knight errant--one as mad and as romantic as the most
feather-headed Amadis that ever came out of Gaul; and so he is to make
himself a deal of trouble and have himself much laughed at before ever
he succeeds in slipping through the fingers of this history to seek
obscurity with Dorothy by his side. For all that, it is Richard's due to
say that his "R. S." letters attracted polite as well as political
attention, and got him much respected and condemned. Also they lodged
him high in the esteem of Senator Hanway, who discovered daily new
excellencies in him; and this came somewhat to the rescue of Richard one
day.

Senator Hanway had a room in a wing of the Harley house which Mrs.
Hanway-Harley called his study. It was a sumptuous apartment, furnished
in mahogany and leather, and a bookcase, filled with Congressional
Records which nobody ever looked at, stood against the wall. Here it was
that Senator Hanway held his conferences; it was here he laid his plans
and brooded them. When Senator Hanway desired to meet a gentleman and
preferred to keep the meeting dark, this study was the scene of that
secrecy. In such event, the blinds were drawn to baffle what prying or
casual eye might come marching up the street; for in Washington, to see
two men conversing, is to know nine times in ten precisely what the
conversation is about. Commonly, however, the blinds were thrown wide,
as though the study's pure proprietor courted a world's scrutiny.

It was in this study that Richard was received by Senator Hanway. There
was an outside door; a caller might be admitted from the veranda without
troubling the main portals of the Harley house. To save the patience of
that journalist, Senator Hanway called Richard's attention to the