Then, clause by clause the bill was read, discussed, and amended in trifling particulars, and now the Committee rose and reported.

The moment the House had resumed its functions and received the report, Mr. Buckstone moved and carried the third reading of the bill.

The same bitter war over the sum to be paid was fought over again, and now that the ayes and nays could be called and placed on record, every man was compelled to vote by name on the three millions, and indeed on every paragraph of the bill from the enacting clause straight through.  But as before, the friends of the measure stood firm and voted in a solid body every time, and so did its enemies.

The supreme moment was come, now, but so sure was the result that not even a voice was raised to interpose an adjournment.  The enemy were totally demoralized.  The bill was put upon its final passage almost without dissent, and the calling of the ayes and nays began.  When it was ended the triumph was complete—­the two-thirds vote held good, and a veto was impossible, as far as the House was concerned!

Mr. Buckstone resolved that now that the nail was driven home, he would clinch it on the other side and make it stay forever.  He moved a reconsideration of the vote by which the bill had passed.  The motion was lost, of course, and the great Industrial University act was an accomplished fact as far as it was in the power of the House of Representatives to make it so.

There was no need to move an adjournment.  The instant the last motion was decided, the enemies of the University rose and flocked out of the Hall, talking angrily, and its friends flocked after them jubilant and congratulatory.  The galleries disgorged their burden, and presently the house was silent and deserted.

When Col.  Sellers and Washington stepped out of the building they were surprised to find that the daylight was old and the sun well up.  Said the Colonel: 

“Give me your hand, my boy!  You’re all right at last!  You’re a millionaire!  At least you’re going to be.  The thing is dead sure.  Don’t you bother about the Senate.  Leave me and Dilworthy to take care of that.  Run along home, now, and tell Laura.  Lord, it’s magnificent news—­perfectly magnificent!  Run, now.  I’ll telegraph my wife.  She must come here and help me build a house.  Everything’s all right now!”

Washington was so dazed by his good fortune and so bewildered by the gaudy pageant of dreams that was already trailing its long ranks through his brain, that he wandered he knew not where, and so loitered by the way that when at last he reached home he woke to a sudden annoyance in the fact that his news must be old to Laura, now, for of course Senator Dilworthy must have already been home and told her an hour before.  He knocked at her door, but there was no answer.

“That is like the Duchess,” said he.  “Always cool; a body can’t excite her-can’t keep her excited, anyway.  Now she has gone off to sleep again, as comfortably as if she were used to picking up a million dollars every day or two”