Another campaign must intervene before the United States Senatorship became an acute issue, and meanwhile the party in the state had not in many years been so united.

Credit was freely given to the "Courier" for the formidable strength developed by the Democracy: and it had become indubitably a vigorous and conservative reflector of party opinion, without estranging a growing constituency of readers who liked its clean and orderly presentation of general news.

The ownership of the newspaper had become, since the abrupt termination of the lawsuit instituted by Thatcher, almost as much of a mystery as formerly.
Harwood's intimate relations with it had not been revived, and neither Mrs.Owen nor Bassett ever spoke to him of the newspaper except in the most casual fashion.
Dan was conscious that the senator from Fraser had changed in the years that had passed since the beginning of their acquaintance.

Bassett had outwardly altered little as he crossed the watershed of middle life; but it seemed to Dan that the ill-temper he had manifested in the Thatcher affair had marked a climacteric.

The self-control and restraint that had so impressed him at first had visibly diminished.