e motion all of the gentlemen
in that dining room rose to their feet in respect to the distinguished
guest of that Old Hickory Club. Also many friendly glances were cast
upon me, which I returned with a smile of great gratitude.

"Yes, the pen is mightier than the mule stick in his eyes, the
scoundrel," remarked my Uncle, the General Robert, as I drove to the
Capitol with him in his car, while the Gouverneur Faulkner took his
guest with him in his.

"Is any proof been found that he shall not do this robbery to France,
my Uncle Robert?" I asked with great eagerness.

"Trap is about ready to spring, but not quite. God, but Jeff Whitworth
is a skilled thief! I know what he is up to but I can't quite get it
on the surface. Keep the French robber busy, boy, for a little longer,
and I'll land him. Here we are at the office! Now you get busy keeping
them busy--and I'll land 'em. If not, I'll go and show France what
real fighting is and I'll take you with me into the worst trench
they've got! Battles, indeed--they ought to have been at Chickamauga.
Now depart!" With which words my Uncle, the General Robert, got out of
the car and left me to direct it to wherever I chose.

"I have a warmth at heart that the three men most beloved of me would
go onto the French battle line with me," I murmured to myself as the
black chauffeur drove me back to that Club of Old Hickory to get me
again in company of my Buzz. "And yet it is the custom of women to
believe that they command the deepest affection of which a man is
possessed. And, _helas_, it is believed to be impossible for a
comrade that he be also a lover!"

It has been my good fortune to be one of the guests at many very
brilliant receptions of much state in some of the very grand and
ancient palaces of the different countries of Europe, but at none of
them have I seen a greater brilliancy than at the one given in his
Mansion by the Gouverneur Faulkner of the State of Harpeth in America.
All of that old Mansion, which has the high ceilings and the
decorations of a palace, if not quite the size, was adorned with very
large masses of a most lovely and handsome flower, which is of many
shades of a pink hue set in dark and shining leaves and which is
called the rhododendron. There were many lights and music of a
softness I have never heard equaled, because the souls of those black
men seem to be formed for a very strange kind of music. Also I had
never beheld women of a more loveli