A Man of Two Countries

								




   V.    Despair                              165



   VI.   Il Trovatore                         180



   VII.  Debauching a Legislature             196



   VIII. Danvers' Discouragement              211



   IX.   A Frontier Knock                     219



   X.    Wheels Within Wheels                 226



   XI.   The Chinese Legend                   241



   XII.  Recognition                          251



   XIII. The Lobbyist                         257



   XIV.  The Keystone                         268



   XV.   An Unpremeditated Speech             281



   XVI. The Election                          291
BOOK I

THE RIVER



   "I beheld the westward marches

     Of the ... nations,

     Restless, struggling, toiling, striving."

                                  --Longfellow
Chapter I
Twisting the Lion's Tail

Philip Danvers, heading a small party of horsemen, galloped around the
corner of a warehouse and pulled up on the levee at Bismarck as the mate
of the Far West bellowed, "Let 'er go!"
"Hold on!" he shouted, leaping from his mount.
"Why in blazes!" The mate's impatience flared luridly as he ordered the
gang-plank replaced. His heat ignited the smouldering resentment of the
passengers, and they, too, exploded.
"We're loaded to the guards now!" yelled one.
"Yeh can't come aboard!" threatened another.
"Haven't yeh got a full passenger list a'ready, Captain?" demanded a
blustering, heavy-set man with beetling eyebrows, as he pushed himself
angrily through the crowding men to the deck-rail.
"Can't help it if I have, Burroughs," retorted the autocrat of the
river-boat. "These troopers are recruits for the North West Mounted
Police----"
"The hell yeh say!"
Philip Danvers noted the unfriendly eye, and realized that this burly
fellow dominated even the captain.
"Their passage was engaged three months ago," went on the officer.
"It's nothing to me," affirmed Burroughs, reddening in his effort to
regain his surface amenity.
The young trooper, superintending the loading of the horses, resented
the manifest unfriendliness toward the English recruits. A dreary rain
added discomfort, and the passengers growled at the slow progress
hitherto made against the spring floods of the turbulent Missouri and
this prolonged delay at Bismarck.
As he went up the gang-plank and walked along the deck, bits of
conversation came to him.
"He looks like an officer," said one, with a jerk of his thumb in his
direction.
"An officer! Where? D'yeh mean the dark-haired one?" The voice was that
of Burroughs again, and as Danvers met his insolent eye an instant
antagonism flashed between the roughly dressed frontiersman and the
lean-flanked, broad-shouldered English youth.
"Hello! 'F there ain't Toe String Joe!" continued Burroughs, recognizing
the last to come on board, as the line was cast off and the steamer