him how he intended to vote upon a bill. When this happened he looked
at the interrogator in the plaintive way which was his habit, and
answered slowly: "I reckon I'll have to think it over." He was not in
Hurlbut's councils.

There was much bustle all about him, but he was not part of it. The
newspaper reporters remarked the quiet, inoffensive old figure
pottering about aimlessly on the outskirts of the crowd, and thought
Uncle Billy as lonely as a man might well be, for he seemed less a
part of the political arrangement than any member they had ever seen.
He would have looked less lonely and more in place trudging alone
through the furrows of his home fields in a wintry twilight.

And yet, everybody liked the old man, Hurlbut in particular, if Uncle
Billy had known it; for Hurlbut watched the votes very closely and was
often struck by the soundness of Representative Rollinson's
intelligence in voting.

In return, Uncle Billy liked Hurlbut better than any other man he had
ever known--except Henry, of course. On the first day of the session,
when the young leader had been pointed out to him, Uncle Billy's
humble soul was prostrate with admiration, and when Hurlbut led the
first attack on the monopolistic tendencies of the Republican party,
Representative Rollinson, chuckling in his beard at the handsome
youth's audacity, himself dared so greatly as to clap his hands
aloud. Hurlbut, on the floor, was always a storm centre: tall,
dramatic, bold, the members put down their newspapers whenever his
strong voice was heard demanding recognition, and his "Mr. Speaker!"
was like the first rumble of thunder. The tempest nearly always
followed, and there were times when it threatened to become more than