oment I made this resolve to myself: "That
Gouverneur Launcelot may ride far out of the white road, but I intend
to run at his stirrup." And I found that it required swift running,
for the road led--shall I say--into "tall timbers."

It is with a burning of countenance that arises from a hot shame,
which I do not even to this moment exactly understand, that I recall
to my mind that half hour which Mr. Robert Carruthers of Grez and Bye
spent with the beautiful Madam Patricia Whitworth in one of the deep
windows that looked from the private study of His Excellency of the
State of Harpeth, over into the great hills that surround the city.
Things happened in this wise: That Madam Whitworth made the
commencement of our duel of intelligences by assuming that I was a
simple French infant before whom she could dangle the very sweet
bonbon of affection and take away from it a treasure that it held in
the hollow of its hand as a sacred trust. That Madam Whitworth did not
realize that instead of a very small young boy from gay Paris, whose
eyes were closed like those of a very young cat, she was dealing with
the very wicked girl who placed the word "devil" behind the word
"dare," speaking in the language of that Mr. Willie Saint Louis when
he informed me that he was the man who had so placed the "go" behind
Chicago while on a visit to that city. I was that girl.

CHAPTER X

VITRIOL AND THE HOODOO

"I suppose it is absurd for a staid old matron like myself to be
jealous, really jealous, at seeing a child like you being consumed
alive by a lot of simpering misses in pink and blue chiffon pinafores,
who ought to be in their nursery cots asleep, but I have been and am,
boy. Did you forget that I was your oldest friend while Sue Tomlinson
fed you sweets out of her hand?" And as she spoke she seated herself
in the exact center of the window seat and motioned me to place myself
in the portion of the left side that remained. I inserted myself into
the space that was so indicated and laid my arm along the window ledge
behind her very much undressed back, so that I might give to my lungs
space to expand for air. I think that arrangement made very much for
the comfort of the beautiful Madam Patricia, for she immediately
appropriated that arm as a cushion for her undraped shoulders. We
being thus comfortably wedged, the warfare began.

"All week I've been thinking about you, you wonderful boy, and
wondering just what you have be