obert, made the
introduction.

And all the long hours of that long day were as dreams of sadness and
fear to me as I went about the many duties of entertainment laid upon
me. At luncheon at that Club of Old Hickory I sat opposite the small
Frenchman who sat on the right hand of my Gouverneur Faulkner, and
opposite to me sat my Uncle, the General Robert. No business was in
discussion at that time but I could see those eyes of French
shrewdness make a darting from one face to another and ever they came
back to me with a great puzzle which gave to me terrible fear.

To all the plans for his entertainment he gave an assent of delight
and for that two days' journey down into the grazing lands of the
Harpeth Valley he had a great eagerness until told that it was to be
undertaken upon the morrow.

"Is it not that we will be occupied on the morning of to-morrow with
the signing of those papers of importance, Your Excellency?" he asked
with a grave annoyance which was under a fine control.

"The Secretary of State, General Carruthers, and I think it will be
best that you see the grazing lands of Harpeth and some of the mules
being put into condition before the signing of the contracts," was
what was "handed out to him," as my Buzz would have expressed it, by
my Gouverneur Faulkner with a great courtesy and kindliness as he
helped himself to some excellent chicken prepared in a fry. I could
see a great start of alarm come into the eyes of that small
Lieutenant, the Count de Bourdon, at those calm words, but he gave not
a sign of it. In my heart was a great hope that something had been
discovered for the protection of my soldiers of France, and I also
took to myself a portion of that excellent chicken and did make the
attempt to consume it as I beheld all of those great gentlemen
performing. I believe that under excitement men possess a much greater
calmness of appetite than do women.

"Monsieur le Gouverneur, it is not necessary that I behold those lands
and those mules; the signature of the great Gouverneur of the State of
Harpeth will make a mule to grow from a desert, in the eyes of the
French Government," he said with a smile of great charm spreading over
his very small countenance.

But just at this moment, when a reply would have been of an
awkwardness to make, the music, which is made by a most delightful
band of black men for all eating in that Club of Old Hickory, began to
play the great Marseillaise, and with on