that very afternoon—so far as his crime against the community was concerned. There arose a feeling that he had wiped it out.
And when they heard late in the afternoon that he, after an affectionate good-by from the general, had walked calmly back into the jail, they began to feel that Henry Harrington was really a superior person although a murderer.
That night fifteen or twenty gaunt men and half a dozen worn, anxious women, leaders in the leaderless mass of burned out townspeople, met in the courthouse to take counsel what to do. Mayor Foster presided, and Lawyer Moses Duffield had the last word.
"It stands to reason that there is a remedy," he was summing up. "The Court has found what the law is; that's all it can do. But Congress can grant relief. What we'll need is somebody to represent us before Congress—somcebody that we all believe in—that we know is honest and that they know is honest back there; somebody good at convincing individual congressmen and individual senators; somebody that we could appoint a sort of commissioner to represent us and lobby for us—using that word in its good sense. It all depends on Congress."
Congress? They felt as helpless as before. Congress was such an august, inchoate, far-away body.
"Somebody we all believe in—and we all know is honest," reflected Herman Schuyler and pursed his lips.
"But it isn't only Congress," perceived Mayor Foster. "It's these dirty Siwashes we've got to deal with, isn't it, Moses?"
"The Salisheuttes? Yes; they are our landlords tonight," affirmed old Moses with simple conviction.
