before his departure, and listened ruefully as he said:  “I tell you, Cornelius, now, you’d better go on home, get back to your business and come again next year.  The clouds of battle will be somewhat dispelled by then and we can see clearer what to do.  It was too early this year.  We were too near the fight still, and there were party wounds to be bound up and little factional sores that had to be healed.  But next year, Cornelius, next year we’ll see what we can do for you.”

His constituent did not tell him that even if his pride would let him go back home a disappointed applicant, he had not the means wherewith to go.  He did not tell him that he was trying to keep up appearances and hide the truth from his wife, who, with their two children, waited and hoped for him at home.

When he went home that night, Col.  Mason saw instantly that things had gone wrong with him.  But here the tact and delicacy of the old politician came uppermost and, without trying to draw his story from him—­for he already divined the situation too well—­he sat for a long time telling the younger man stories of the ups and downs of men whom he had known in his long and active life.

They were stories of hardship, deprivation and discouragement.  But the old man told them ever with the touch of cheeriness and the note of humor that took away the ghastly hopelessness of some of the pictures.  He told them with such feeling and sympathy that Johnson was moved to frankness and told him his own pitiful tale.

Now that he had some one to whom he could open his heart, Johnson himself was no less willing to look the matter in the face, and even during the long summer days, when he had begun to live upon his wardrobe, piece by piece, he still kept up; although some of his pomposity went, along with the Prince Albert coat and the shiny hat.  He now wore a shiny coat, and less showy head-gear.  For a couple of weeks, too, he disappeared, and as he returned with some money, it was fair to presume that he had been at work somewhere, but he could not stay away from the city long.

It was nearing the middle of autumn when Col.  Mason came home to their rooms one day to find his colleague more disheartened and depressed than he had ever seen him before.  He was lying with his head upon his folded arm, and when he looked up there were traces of tears upon his face.

“Why, why, what’s the matter now?” asked the old man.  “No bad news, I hope.”

“Nothing worse than I should have expected,” was the choking answer.  “It’s a letter from my wife.  She’s sick and one of the babies is down, but”—­his voice broke—­“she tells me to stay and fight it out.  My God, Mason, I could stand it if she whined or accused me or begged me to come home, but her patient, long-suffering bravery breaks me all up.”