tonia and I will walk within hearing; a roof
makes me restless such a night as this"; for the waning moon had risen,
and the cool wind from the Gulf was shaking a thousand scents from the
trees and the flowering shrubs.

The change was made with the words, and the doctor sat down beside his
son. "I was asking, Jack, how you knew so much about Texan affairs, and
how you came so suddenly to take part in them?"

"Indeed, father, we could not escape knowing. The Texan fever was more
or less in every young man's blood. One night Dare had a supper at his
rooms, and there were thirty of us present. A man called Faulkner--a
fine fellow from Nacogdoches--spoke to us. How do you think he spoke,
when his only brother, a lad of twenty, is working in a Mexican mine
loaded with chains?"

"For what?"

"He said one day that 'the natural boundaries of the United States
are the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.' He was sent to the mines for the
words. Faulkner's only hope for him is in the independence of Texas.
He had us on fire in five minutes--all but Sandy McDonald, who loves to
argue, and therefore took the Mexican side."

"What could he say for it?"

"He said it was a very unjustlike thing to make Mexico give her American
settlers in Texas two hundred and twenty-four millions of acres because
she thought a change of government best for her own interests."

"The Americans settled in Texas under the solemn guarantee of the
constitution of eighteen twenty-four. How many of them would have built
homes under a tyrannical despotism like that Santa Anna is now forcing
upon them?" asked the doctor, warmly.

"McDonald said, 'There is a deal of talk about freedom among you
Americans, and it just means nothing at all.' You should have seen
Faulkner! He turned on him like a tornado. 'How should you know anything
about freedom, McDonald?' he cried. 'You are in feudal darkness in the
Highlands of Scotland. You have only just emigrated into freedom. But
we Americans are born free! If you can not feel the difference between
a federal constitution and a military and religious despotism, there is
simply no use talking to you. How would you like to find yourself in a
country where suddenly trial by jury and the exercise of your religion
was denied you? Of course you could abandon the home you had built, and
the acres you had bought and put under cultivation, and thus make some
Mexican heir to your ten years' labor. Perhaps a Scot, for conscience'