l and sink into the porch chair
that had become his by right of daily occupation. This morning his mind
was set upon greater things. Affectionate greetings from passing friends
hardly checked him, and he strode deliberately onward to the office of
the Hills County _Eagle_, the daily, owned and edited by Amos Strong--a
long ago friend, although for twice a score of years his most
unrelenting political foe. There had been a time when the town
prophesied a "meeting" between these two, but their enmity had finally
congealed into nothing more deadly than complete estrangement.

Now, indifferent to a look of consternation on a reporter's face, the
Colonel stamped across the "city room," glared around until he saw a
glass door marked "editor," pushed it violently open without knocking
and closed it after him. This had not happened in the reporter's memory;
it had, on the other hand, been just the thing everybody feared might
come to pass.

The grizzled editor did not immediately look up; yet, when he did, his
astonishment was complete, and his ever alert mind reviewed the
_Eagle's_ recent utterances to discover if therein lay a reason for this
visit. Recalling nothing of particular belligerency--at any rate,
nothing against the Colonel--he said crisply:

"Take a seat, Colonel Hampton."

"Colonel Hampton will never take a seat in your office, sir," his caller
thundered, greatly emphasizing "Colonel Hampton." And, answering a
further look of perplexity in the editor's face that now betrayed a
growing anger, he continued jerkily: "We're coming very near to war,
sir; this country, our country, against those sickening anti-Christs who
bayonet children, rape women, and wantonly torture unto death
defenseless men--and boast of it, sir; gloat over it! It'll be our
country against that polluted swamp of slimy creatures, sir; and in our
country there shall be neither Democrats nor Republicans! Politics be
damned, sir! Until those breeders of paresis--those Hohenzollern
upstarts who, as God is my witness, are the vomit of hell--shall be
stripped of their freedom, you and I cast our vote for Humanity! Amos, I
want to take your hand, and I want you to take mine!"

Mr. Strong sprang to his feet and his chair fell heavily to the floor.
It was this alarming noise that reached the listening reporter's ear and
brought him in haste to his chief's aid; yet when he had pushed open the
door, unnoticed by those within, he drew quickly back and