ans for you to
come to me. I'll try not to interrupt you. Two rings means to go to
the General. That is about all." With a wave of his hand the
Gouverneur Faulkner dismissed me to my death.

With my head up in the air I turned from him and prepared to retire to
my prison from which I could see no release, when again I heard his
summons. He had risen and was standing beside his desk and as I turned
he held out his hand into which I laid mine as he drew me near to him.

"Youngster," he said and the smile which all persons call cold was all
of gentleness into my eyes, "these are going to be some hard days for
us all, these next ten, and if I drive you too hard, balk, will you?"

"To the death for you I'll go, my Gouverneur Faulkner," I answered
him, looking straight into his tired eyes that were so deep under the
black, silver-tipped wings of his brows. I did not mean that death I
had threatened myself from the mathematics in the paper, but in my
heart there was something that rose and answered the sadness in his
eyes with again all that savageness of a barbarian.

"Then I'll take you to the point of demise--almost--if I need you," he
answered me with a laugh that hid a quiver of emotion in his voice as
something that was like unto a spark shot from the depths of his eyes
into the depths of mine. "Go get the papers verified and let me know
when you have finished." And this time I was in reality dismissed. I
went; but in my heart was a strange smoulder that the spark had
kindled.

In the small room that opened off of that of the Gouverneur Faulkner,
with a door that I knew to lead into the room of my Uncle, the General
Robert, I seated myself at a table by a window which looked down upon
the city spread at the foot of the Capitol hill lying shimmering in
the young spring mists that drifted across its housetops. I laid down
the papers, took a pencil from a tray close beside my hand and then
faced the most dreadful of any situation that I had ever brought down
upon my own head. I also faced at the same time the smiling
countenance of my Buzz, who looked into the door from the room of my
Uncle, the General Robert, slipped through that door and closed it
gently behind him.

"Safe on first base! The old boy of the bayonets has been called to
the Governor and he'll not be back before they both have luncheon sent
in to them. I have taken his letters and now I'm off. What did Bill
hand you?"

"Death and also destruction,"