applause, but he had expected none. Senator Dorman was already
saying "Mr. President?" and there was a stir in the crowded
galleries, and an anticipatory moving of chairs among the Senators.
In the press gallery the reporters bunched together their scattered
papers and inspected their pencil-points with earnestness. Dorman
was the best speaker of the Senate, and he was on the popular side
of it. It would be the great speech of the session, and the prospect
was cheering after a deluge of railroad and insurance bills.

"I want to tell you," he began, "why I have worked for this
resolution recommending the pardon of Alfred Williams. It is one of
the great laws of the universe that every living thing be given a
chance. In the case before us that law has been violated. This does
not resolve itself into a question of second chances. The boy of
whom we are speaking has never had his first."

Senator Harrison swung his chair half-way around and looked out at
the green things which were again coming into their own on the
State-house grounds. He knew--in substance--what Senator Dorman
would say without hearing it, and he was a little tired of the whole
affair. He hoped that one way or other they would finish it up that
night, and go ahead with something else. He had done what he could,
and now the responsibility was with the rest of them. He thought
they were shouldering a great deal to advocate the pardon in the
face of the united opposition of Johnson County, where the crime had
been committed. It seemed a community should be the best judge of
its own crimes, and that was what he, as the Senator from Johnson,
had tried to impress upon them.

He knew that his argument against the boy had been a strong one. He