being, or being considered, orthodox--Mr. Ratcliffe's heart yearned
toward the charming girl quite with the sensations of a father, or
even of an elder brother.

His brother senators very soon began to remark that the Prairie
Giant had acquired a trick of looking up to the ladies' gallery. One
day Mr. Jonathan Andrews, the special correspondent of the New
York Sidereal System, a very friendly organ, approached Senator
Schuyler Clinton with a puzzled look on his face.

"Can you tell me," said he, "what has happened to Silas P.
Ratcliffe? Only a moment ago I was talking with him at his seat on
a very important subject, about which I must send his opinions off
to New York to-night, when, in the middle of a sentence, he
stopped short, got up without looking at me, and left the Senate
Chamber, and now I see him in the gallery talking with a lady
whose face I don't know."

Senator Clinton slowly adjusted his gold eye-glasses and looked up
at the place indicated: "Ah! Mrs. Lightfoot Lee! I think I will say a
word to her myself;" and turning his back on the special
correspondent, he skipped away with youthful agility after the
Senator from Illinois.

"Devil!" muttered Mr. Andrews; "what has got into the old fools?"
and in a still less audible murmur as he looked up to Mrs. Lee,
then in close conversation with Ratcliffe: "Had I better make an
item of that?"

When young Mr. Schneidekoupon called upon Senator Ratcliffe to