“Which being translated,” observed the Governor, “means that these gentlemen will advance you the money on the line suggested by your New York lawyer.”
“Yes,” said the gambler. “You are to fix up the papers, and I am to go down there to-night. Everything turned out just like Randolph Mason said it would. If the rest goes through as slick, we will be riding in carriages.”
“Produce the sealed orders,” said the Governor, partaking of the mock dramatic atmosphere.
The Secretary of State drew a big envelope from his pocket and threw it down on the table. The Executive leaned over, opened the paper, and, after having examined it carefully, took up a pen and began to write.
Major Culverson wandered over to the window and looked out at the hot, monotonous, sterile country. “I wonder,” he murmured, “if this is really the passing of the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan?”
IX
THE audience in the court-room arose and remained standing until the judge in his black silk robe had entered and taken his place on the bench. Then the audience resumed its seat, and the clerk began to read the proceedings for the previous day. The ceremony attendant upon the sitting of the Circuit Court of the United States carried with it an impressive sense of majestic, imperial authority, and an air of grave, judicial deliberation. It was the Government of the United States of America, the spirit of supreme order and law moving through its servant, and, next to the Great Ruler of Events, it was greatest. It had assumed for the good of men the right to sit in judgment, and to say wherein lay the justice of their complicated quarrels. Before it, every man's cause was of equal import, and every man was of equal stature; bond or free, one stood before it naked of influence, and with his shoulder made as high as the shoulder of his fellow.
This is the theory. If it fails, it is because the law at best is but a human device, and its servants, after all, are but men like the others.