Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/72

 "No," said Holman stoutly, "afterward. After the vote; we'll have that satisfaction. Keep him on the hooks."

"Well," said McCray. "But here, you take it. It—burns—" He gave to Holman a roll of bills, and sighed in relief. "You have saved me," he said; "you have saved my soul."

"Oh, to hell with your soul!" Holman said, with more orthodoxy than he was accustomed to evince. He was not sufficiently accustomed to the highly moral to relish its too bald expression; perhaps his experience had been of one other as yet unrecognized benefit—it had made him wholesomely afraid of cant, and whatever good his spiritual adventure of that day had done, or was to do him, he was in little danger of becoming a Pharisee.

Greggerson, the clerk of the house, in shirt-*sleeves, a handkerchief stuffed into his collar, had himself taken the reading-desk that night. Above him the speaker, bent forward, watched the proceedings like some bird of prey, smiting his desk sharply with his gavel now and then, or pointing it fiercely at some one. Above the speaker, in placid