“Well I do wonder what you will be to-morrow; Colonel, after the President signs the bill!”

“General, sir?—­General, without a doubt.  Yes, sir, tomorrow it will be General, let me congratulate you, sir; General, you’ve done a great work, sir;—­you’ve done a great work for the niggro; Gentlemen allow me the honor to introduce my friend General Sellers, the humane friend of the niggro.  Lord bless me; you’ll’ see the newspapers say, General Sellers and servants arrived in the city last night and is stopping at the Fifth Avenue; and General Sellers has accepted a reception and banquet by the Cosmopolitan Club; you’ll see the General’s opinions quoted, too —­and what the General has to say about the propriety of a new trial and a habeas corpus for the unfortunate Miss Hawkins will not be without weight in influential quarters, I can tell you.”

“And I want to be the first to shake your faithful old hand and salute you with your new honors, and I want to do it now—­General!” said Washington, suiting the action to the word, and accompanying it with all the meaning that a cordial grasp and eloquent eyes could give it.

The Colonel was touched; he was pleased and proud, too; his face answered for that.

Not very long after breakfast the telegrams began to arrive.  The first was from Braham, and ran thus: 

     “We feel certain that the verdict will be rendered to-day.  Be it
     good or bad, let it find us ready to make the next move instantly,
     whatever it may be:” 

“That’s the right talk,” said Sellers.  “That Graham’s a wonderful man.  He was the only man there that really understood me; he told me so himself, afterwards.”

The next telegram was from Mr. Dilworthy: 

     “I have not only brought over the Great Invincible, but through him
     a dozen more of the opposition.  Shall be re-elected to-day by an
     overwhelming majority.”

“Good again!” said the Colonel.  “That man’s talent for organization is something marvelous.  He wanted me to go out there and engineer that thing, but I said, No, Dilworthy, I must be on hand here,—­both on Laura’s account and the bill’s—­but you’ve no trifling genius for organization yourself, said I—­and I was right.  You go ahead, said I —­you can fix it—­and so he has.  But I claim no credit for that—­if I stiffened up his back-bone a little, I simply put him in the way to make his fight—­didn’t undertake it myself.  He has captured Noble—.  I consider that a splendid piece of diplomacy—­Splendid, Sir!”

By and by came another dispatch from New York: 

“Jury still out.  Laura calm and firm as a statue.  The report that the jury have brought her in guilty is false and premature.”

“Premature!” gasped Washington, turning white.  “Then they all expect that sort of a verdict, when it comes in.”

And so did he; but he had not had courage enough to put it into words.  He had been preparing himself for the worst, but after all his preparation the bare suggestion of the possibility of such a verdict struck him cold as death.