vocal; when, all order lost, nine-tenths of the men on the other side
of the House were on their feet shouting jeers and denunciations, and
the orator faced them, out-thundering them all, with his own cohorts,
flushed and cheering, gathered round him. Then, indeed, Uncle Billy
would have thought him a god, if he had known what a god was.

Sometimes Uncle Billy saw him in the hotel lobby, but he seemed always
to be making for the elevator in a hurry, with half-a-dozen people
trying to detain him, or descending momentarily from the stairway for
a quick, sharp talk with one or two members, their heads close
together, after which Hurlbut would dart upward again.

Sometimes the old man sat down at one of the writing tables, in a
corner of the lobby, and, annexing a sheet of the hotel note-paper,
"wrote home" to Henry. He sat with his head bent far over, the broad
brim of his felt hat now and then touching the hand with which he kept
the paper from sliding; and he pressed diligently upon his pen,
usually breaking it before the letter was finished. He looked so like
a man intent upon concealment that the reporters were wont to say:
"There's Uncle Billy humped up over his guilty secret again."

The secret usually took this form:


"Dear Son Henry:

"I would be glad if you was here. There is big doings. Hurlbut give
it to them to-day. He don't give the Republicans no rest, he lights
into them like sixty you would like to see him. They are plenty nice
fellows in the Republicans too but they lay mighty low when Hurlbut