His followers respected this privacy, and
left him alone. He was their prophet, and had a right to seclusion.
He was their chieftain, and while he sat in his monosyllabic
solitude, his ragged tail reclined in various attitudes about him,
and occasionally one man spoke, or another swore. Newspapers
and tobacco were their resource in periods of absolute silence.
A shade of depression rested on the faces and the voices of Clan
Ratcliffe that evening, as is not unusual with forces on the eve of
battle. Their remarks came at longer intervals, and were more
pointless and random than usual. There was a want of elasticity in
their bearing and tone, partly coming from sympathy with the
evident depression of their chief; partly from the portents of the
time. The President was to arrive within forty-eight hours, and as
yet there was no sign that he properly appreciated their services;
there were signs only too unmistakeable that he was painfully
misled and deluded, that his countenance was turned wholly in
another direction, and that all their sacrifices were counted as
worthless. There was reason to believe that he came with a
deliberate purpose of making war upon Ratcliffe and breaking him
down; of refusing to bestow patronage on them, and of bestowing
it wherever it would injure them most deeply. At the thought that
their honestly earned harvest of foreign missions and consulates,
department-bureaus, custom-house and revenue offices,
postmasterships, Indian agencies, and army and navy contracts,
might now be wrung from their grasp by the selfish greed of a
mere accidental intruder--a man whom nobody wanted and every
one ridiculed--their natures rebelled, and they felt that such things
must not be; that there could be no more hope for democratic
government if such things were possible.
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