honor, no matter whether I be in Opposition or at the head of the
Government, if I receive every six months the retaining fee of
which you speak, I will be your representative. And my friends
can do nothing. I despise them. _I_ am the Opposition. You
have done well, my dear sir, to consider me alone.''

Clay turned in his chair and looked back of him through the
office to the room beyond.

``Boys,'' he called, ``you can come out now.''

He rose and pushed his chair away and beckoned to the orderly who
sat in the saddle holding the General's horse. Langham and
MacWilliams came out and stood in the open door, and Mendoza rose
and looked at Clay.

``You can go now,'' Clay said to him, quietly. ``And you can
rise in the Senate on Tuesday and move your vote of want of
confidence and object to our concession, and when you have
resumed your seat the Secretary of Mines will rise in his turn
and tell the Senate how you stole out here in the night and tried
to blackmail me, and begged me to bribe you to be silent, and
that you offered to throw over your friends and to take all that
we would give you and keep it yourself. That will make you
popular with your friends, and will show the Government just what
sort of a leader it has working against it.''

Clay took a step forward and shook his finger in the officer's
face. ``Try to break that concession; try it. It was made by
one Government to a body of honest, decent business men, with a