Relieved at the departure of the witnesses, Sanders showed increased aggressiveness.  “To be sure, Senator, you were careful not to personally promise me anything for my support at the election, as you say,” the leader sneered; “but you had Jim Stevens to make promises for you, which was smooth, absolute an’ artistic smooth—­”

“Stop, sir!” Langdon furiously shouted.  “You forget, sir, that your insinuation is an insult to a man elected Senator from Mississippi, an insult to my State and to my friend Senator Stevens, who I know would make you no promises for me, for he had not my authority.”

“Certainly you’re a Senator, but what’s a Senator, anyhow?  I’ll tell you, Mr. Colonel Langdon, a Senator is a man who holds out for his own pocket as much as us fellows that make him will stand for.  When we don’t get our rightful share, he’s through.”

With a sudden start, as though to spring at Sanders’ throat, Langdon, with compressed lips and eyes blazing, grasped the edge of the table with a grip that threatened to rend the polished boards.  With intensest effort he slowly regained control of himself.  His fury had actually weakened him.  His knees shook, and he sank weakly into a chair.  When he finally spoke his voice was strained and laborious.  “Sanders, you and I, sir, must never meet again, because I might not succeed in keeping my hands off you.  What would my old comrades of the Third Mississippi say if they saw me sitting here and you there with a whole body, sir, after what you have said?  They would not believe their eyes, thank God, sir.  They would all go over to Stuart City and buy new glasses, sir.”  A suspicious moisture appeared on the Colonel’s cheeks which he could not dry too quickly to escape Sanders’ observation.

“But I had to let you stay, sir, because you, the sole accuser, are the only one who can tell me what I must know.”

“What do you want to know?” asked Sanders, who had realized his great mistake in losing his temper, in talking as openly and as violently as he had and in dragging the name of Senator Stevens into the controversy.  He must try to keep Stevens from hearing of this day’s blunder, for Jim Stevens knew as well as he, didn’t he, that the man who loses his temper, like the man who talks too much, is of no use in politics.

“I want to know how you formed your opinion of political matters—­of Senators.  Is it possible, sir, that you have actual knowledge of actual happenings that give you the right to talk as you have?  I want to know if I must feel shame, feel disgrace, sir, to be a Senator from Mississippi; that State, sir, that the Almighty himself, sir, would choose to live in if he came to earth.”

“There, there, Senator, don’t take too seriously what I have said,” Sanders replied in reassuring tone, having outlined his course of action.  “I lost my head because you wouldn’t promise me something I needed—­that appointment for Hagley.  What I said about Senators an’ such was all wild words—­nothin’ in ’em.  Why, how could there be, Senator?” This query was a happy afterthought which Sanders craftily suggested in a designedly artless manner.