The Congressman did not ask to see the paper. He asked for nothing and said nothing. He seemed to be in a daze and when Townsend picked up the hat which he had dropped he took it without a word.
He departed, a moment or two later, and the captain accompanied him to the outer door. Townsend was smiling when he reëntered the library.
“I should be a little sorry for that fellow,” he observed, “if he hadn’t behaved so like a swelled-up bullfrog. He is in for a joyful time with Thacher and the rest of them. Maybe it will be good for him, though. I guess likely he will be a little more careful about the kind of letters he writes.”
He looked at Reliance. She had unfolded the document from Washington and was reading it, or trying to do so. Her hands were trembling. Townsend looked away.
“I gave the Honorable one little piece of parting advice,” he added, with another chuckle. “I told him what I told Ben Snow, that it was generally good policy to wait until after a man was buried before you took it for granted he was dead.”
He stretched out his arms and laughed aloud.
“That did me good!” he declared. “That did me a world of good. I guess maybe I never was dead, after all. Or else I am just coming to life again.”
He turned once more to Miss Clark. She was still gazing at the paper in her hands.
“Well, Reliance,” he said, “that is off your mind. You can sort letters for a while longer anyhow. Are you glad?”
She sighed. “I—I don’t know what I am, hardly, yet,” she confessed. “Oh, Foster, how am I ever—ever goin’ to pay you for this?”