"I am suffering a little, Kitty; that is all. My case comes up within five minutes, and I might as well blow my head off if it shall stick anywhere."
His eyes seemed to flame out with a reckless light as he said this.
"Arthur has a sick look as well," said Kate. "This public life is too exciting for him. See how nervously he sips that glass of water."
"Sick!" exclaimed Elk MacNair, with a voice of bitterness, yet with a melancholy glance of admiration in the direction of the Congressman; "he is more dangerous than sick. His will is sublime, Kate; nothing can soften it, not even pity."
The committees were now being called by the Speaker, and chairman after chairman rose to make his report. As the list diminished more and more, and the Committee upon Ancient Contracts approached its turn, there were no two such livid, deathly faces in all the crowded house as these two brothers wore. Elk MacNair's had a settled ferocity. The youthfulness and comely moods were gone from it, and the burnt-out countenance of a man of the world looked dead and ashen above the exhausted reservoirs of a diseased mind. Nothing was left but the last chance before despair, and apprehensive of the failure of this hope also, his gloved hand, resting upon a pocket hidden at his hip, sought support from the hilt of a pistol secreted there. Was this the meaning of the sullen and ghastly determination glaring from his eyes? Yes, love and death were almost mated; and so in every busy Congress do the spectres of temptation and ill-omen lurk in wait.
The country brother on the floor showed also his tenacious purpose in his compressed lips, straight, expanded breast and shoulders, and clear and direct but grave look. No extremity of occasion could make a heroic figure of him, but in his plain face was the beauty of moral courage. He rose to his feet when the Speaker cried:
"Committee on Ancient Contracts is next in order. The gentleman from Pennsylvania!"
The people in the galleries were not disappointed that such a homely man should have no voice nor grace, and that he spoke only with the gravest effort.
"The gentleman's voice is inaudible to the chair," said the Speaker.
But Elk MacNair had heard it from where he sat. He had distinguished the fitful words: