“And aren’t you tired sometimes of the struggle?”

“Tired?  Yes, everybody is tired I suppose.  But it is a glorious profession.  And would you want me to be dependent, Philip?”

“Well, yes, a little,” said Philip, feeling his way towards what he wanted to say.

“On what, for instance, just now?” asked Ruth, a little maliciously Philip thought.

“Why, on——­” he couldn’t quite say it, for it occurred to him that he was a poor stick for any body to lean on in the present state of his fortune, and that the woman before him was at least as independent as he was.

“I don’t mean depend,” he began again.  “But I love you, that’s all.  Am I nothing—­to you?” And Philip looked a little defiant, and as if he had said something that ought to brush away all the sophistries of obligation on either side, between man and woman.

Perhaps Ruth saw this.  Perhaps she saw that her own theories of a certain equality of power, which ought to precede a union of two hearts, might be pushed too far.  Perhaps she had felt sometimes her own weakness and the need after all of so dear a sympathy and so tender an interest confessed, as that which Philip could give.  Whatever moved her—­the riddle is as old as creation—­she simply looked up to Philip and said in a low voice, “Everything.”

And Philip clasping both her hands in his, and looking down into her eyes, which drank in all his tenderness with the thirst of a true woman’s nature—­

“Oh!  Philip, come out here,” shouted young Eli, throwing the door wide open.

And Ruth escaped away to her room, her heart singing again, and now as if it would burst for joy, “Philip has come.”

That night Philip received a dispatch from Harry—­“The trial begins tomorrow.”

CHAPTER, LI

December 18—­, found Washington Hawkins and Col.  Sellers once more at the capitol of the nation, standing guard over the University bill.  The former gentleman was despondent, the latter hopeful.  Washington’s distress of mind was chiefly on Laura’s account.  The court would soon sit to try her, case, he said, and consequently a great deal of ready money would be needed in the engineering of it.  The University bill was sure to pass this, time, and that would make money plenty, but might not the, help come too late?  Congress had only just assembled, and delays were to be feared.

“Well,” said the Colonel, “I don’t know but you are more or less right, there.  Now let’s figure up a little on, the preliminaries.  I think Congress always tries to do as near right as it can, according to its lights.  A man can’t ask any fairer, than that.  The first preliminary it always starts out on, is, to clean itself, so to speak.  It will arraign two or three dozen of its members, or maybe four or five dozen, for taking bribes to vote for this and that and the other bill last winter.”