Upon all these occasions the Senator made casual references to many benevolent enterprises which his ardent young friend was planning against the day when the passage of the University bill should make his means available for the amelioration of the condition of the unfortunate among his fellow men of all nations and all. climes.  Thus as the weeks rolled on Washington grew up, into an imposing lion once more, but a lion that roamed the peaceful fields of religion and temperance, and revisited the glittering domain of fashion no more.  A great moral influence was thus brought, to bear in favor of the bill; the weightiest of friends flocked to its standard; its most energetic enemies said it was useless to fight longer; they had tacitly surrendered while as yet the day of battle was not come.

CHAPTER LIII.

The session was drawing toward its close.  Senator Dilworthy thought he would run out west and shake hands with his constituents and let them look at him.  The legislature whose duty it would be to re-elect him to the United States Senate, was already in session.  Mr. Dilworthy considered his re-election certain, but he was a careful, painstaking man, and if, by visiting his State he could find the opportunity to persuade a few more legislators to vote for him, he held the journey to be well worth taking.  The University bill was safe, now; he could leave it without fear; it needed his presence and his watching no longer.  But there was a person in his State legislature who did need watching —­a person who, Senator Dilworthy said, was a narrow, grumbling, uncomfortable malcontent—­a person who was stolidly opposed to reform, and progress and him,—­a person who, he feared, had been bought with money to combat him, and through him the commonwealth’s welfare and its politics’ purity.

“If this person Noble,” said Mr. Dilworthy, in a little speech at a dinner party given him by some of his admirers, “merely desired to sacrifice me.—­I would willingly offer up my political life on the altar of my dear State’s weal, I would be glad and grateful to do it; but when he makes of me but a cloak to hide his deeper designs, when he proposes to strike through me at the heart of my beloved State, all the lion in me is roused—­and I say here I stand, solitary and alone, but unflinching, unquailing, thrice armed with my sacred trust; and whoso passes, to do evil to this fair domain that looks to me for protection, must do so over my dead body.”

He further said that if this Noble were a pure man, and merely misguided, he could bear it, but that he should succeed in his wicked designs through, a base use of money would leave a blot upon his State which would work untold evil to the morals of the people, and that he would not suffer; the public morals must not be contaminated.  He would seek this man Noble; he would argue, he would persuade, he would appeal to his honor.