Well, as for that matter, he was a better Democrat than Burr—­if to be a better Democrat meant to place the party will above his personal opinion.  After all, what was a party for if not to unite individual effort and to combine individual differences?  If organisation was not worth the sacrifice of personal prejudices it might as well dissolve before the next election day.  It was, of course, a pity that a man like Burr should dissent from the views of important politicians, but one might as well talk of a ship without officers as of a party without organised leaders.  It was a pity from Burr’s point of view, he was willing to admit, but so long as Burr would make trouble it was just as well that the ill wind should blow his own side good—­he was honestly glad that it had blown Rann’s influence in his direction.  He had never felt more hopeful of anything in his life than he now felt of the senatorship.  Indeed, he was inclined to think that he might have something very like a “walk over.”

“Hold on, Webb,” a voice called behind him, and a moment later he was joined by Diggs, who congratulated him upon his speech of the evening before.  Webb tossed back the congratulations with a laugh.  “Yes, it’s a popular subject just now,” he said.  “Since the negroes have stopped voting in large numbers we’re even going in for honest elections.”

“Well, I reckon it’s as well,” admitted Diggs.  “We used to have some rampant rascality under the old system, I dare say; it took clever trickery to bring in the white rule sometimes.  We have a large negro majority down my way, that obliged us to devise original methods of disposing of it.  It was fighting the devil with fire, I suppose; but self-preservation was a law long before Universal Suffrage was heard of.  At any rate, I had my hand in it now and then.  Once, I remember, on an election day when every darkey in the neighbourhood had turned out to vote, I hit on the idea that the man who was to carry the returns across the river should pretend to get drunk and upset the boat.  It was a pretty scheme and would have worked all right, but, will you believe it, the blamed fool got drunk in earnest, and when the boat upset he was caught under it and drowned.”  He paused an instant and complacently added:  “But we lost those returns, all the same.”

Webb threw his cigar stump in the gutter and turned to Diggs with a laugh.  “That reminds me,” he began, and started a story which he finished on his office steps.

When he went home some hours later he found that Eugenia had regained her high good-humour.  She was sitting before the fire in her bedroom, her hair flowing in the hands of Delphy, who had moved up from Kingsborough, and was doing a thriving trade as a shampooer.  It was her fortnightly custom to pass from head to head in a round of the Kingsborough colony, promoting an intimate trend of gossip among her patrons.

As Dudley entered, she was seeking to induce Eugenia to consent to an application from one of the many bottles she carried in an ancient travelling bag, which had long since descended to her from General Battle.