en how the Russian Bear
behaved at Sebastopol and I liked to watch how he behaved in the Winter
Palace. One day a Cossack officer and his son came to make an appeal.
Mrs. officer had been a puss and bolted with one of the court officials,
so her husband and son wanted leave to go after the man with their guns.
They were so miserable that they sat at a table and took no notice of
anybody or anything. After they'd been sitting a long time, a man came
and laid down a case of dueling pistols on the table beside them. I
couldn't hear what he said, but he sat down with them. Presently I saw
him shake hands with the general.

"Now your husband put something on the table, and sat down with those
wretched prisoners, and presently shook hands with one of them.

"Your husband and that Russian chap did the very same things in the very
same way. Yes, you've married a gentleman by mistake."

I was puzzled. "Who was the Russian?" I asked.

"Oh, didn't I tell you? He was the emperor."

After a minute, while I watched my royal man, the captain laid his hand
on mine. "Don't let these loafers see you crying," he whispered.

"I'm not crying." I looked round to prove that I was not crying, and as
I did so, my glance fell upon the old man's miniature medals. One of
them was the Victoria Cross.

CHAPTER XI

BILLY O'FLYNN

_Kate's Narrative_

Both Jesse and I have a habit of committing our thoughts to paper and
not to speech. Things written can be destroyed, whereas things said stay
terribly alive. I think if other husbands and wives I know of wrote more
and talked less, their homes would not feel so dreadful, so full of
horrible shadows. There are houses where I feel ill as soon as I cross
the door-step, because the very air of the rooms is foul with the spite,
the nagging, the strife of bitter souls. As to the houses where horrors
have taken place--despair, madness, murder, suicide--these are always
haunted, and sensitive people are terrified by ghosts.

My pen has rambled. I sat down to write a thing which must not be said.

Jesse is cruel to young O'Flynn. Perhaps he is justly, rightly cruel, in
gibing at this young cow-boy, taunting him until the lad is on the very
edge of murder. "Got to be done," says Jesse, "I promised his father
that I'd break the colt until he's fed up with robbers. So just you
watch me lift the dust from his hide, and don't you git gesticulating on
my trail with your fool sympathies." Billy doe