The President came out of the White House gates and turned to the right. As he stepped under the big lamp on the post, he took out his watch. It said ten minutes after midnight. A secret service officer came down the walk a short distance away. At a signal from the President, he came up to the gate.

“I am going to walk up to the Capitol, Randall. You don’t need to keep close.”

The officer bowed and waited until the President had turned past the Pension Building before going on behind him.

The President went straight up Pennsylvania Avenue, walking with head bent like a man tired physically and mentally. He turned to the soldier’s monument at the opening to the Capitol grounds and, walking slowly, began to mount the steps behind the statue of Chief Justice John Marshall. The work of the sculptor W. W. Story, the statue was already showing shameful marks of decay in the stone pedestal, which had begun already to crumble and crack away, even though it had only been put up there at the back of the Capitol as recently as 1884.

The President paused a moment to look at the sitting figure of the Chief Justice, then went up the many steps which led to the broad open stone esplanade which lay at the back of the capitol but facing the city. Coming out on this stone terrace, he turned and leaned his arms on the broad casing. He looked beyond the head of the Chief Justice’s statue at the city as it lay spread out in the night, lit in soft and vague outlines by its many electric glow-worm lights.

Just as he reached the coping, the figure of a man appeared at the far end of the terrace. This figure slowly drew near the President. The secret service man stopped at the base of the statue, within easy reaching distance from the President.

Twelve

Chapter Twelve

As the figure of the Man drew nearer to the President, the secret service officer started up from the statue of the Chief Justice, but a gesture from the President warned him not to leave his position. The next instant, the President turned, and with an attitude that proclaimed his complete submissiveness in the presence of an absolute superior, he bent his head and stood in silence.

The secret service man had not been told not to listen, and he could not help hearing the first few words before the two figures above him turned and began to pace side by side across the terrace until their forms were but dimly visible to him.

“I have come, as you requested.”

And the President’s agitated reply, “I felt the need of your counsel and I wished to see you alone. The burdens of my office are heavy. I need you—”

“Let me bear them with you.”