got one-half of what that fellow Polk is
claiming, we should do well enough--that is more than we deserve or
could expect. With our army already at war on the Southwest, England, as
we all know, is planning to take advantage of our helplessness in
Oregon."

Without further answer, she held out to him a document whose appearance
I, at least, recognized.

"I am but a woman," she said, "but it chances that I have been able to
do this country perhaps something of a favor. Your assistant, Mr. Trist,
has done me in his turn a favor. This much I will ask permission to do
for him."

Calhoun's long and trembling fingers were nervously opening the
document. He turned to her with eyes blazing with eagerness. "_It is
Oregon!_" He dropped back into his chair.

"Yes," said Helena von Ritz slowly. "It is Oregon. It is bought and paid
for. It is yours!"

So now they all went over that document, signed by none less than
Pakenham himself, minister plenipotentiary for Great Britain. That
document exists to-day somewhere in our archives, but I do not feel
empowered to make known its full text. I would I had never need to set
down, as I have, the cost of it. These others never knew that cost; and
now they never can know, for long years since both Calhoun and Doctor
Ward have been dead and gone. I turned aside as they examined the
document which within the next few weeks was to become public property.
The red wafers which mended it--and which she smilingly explained at
Calhoun's demand--were, as I knew, not less than red drops of blood.

In brief I may say that this paper stated that, in case the United
States felt disposed to reopen discussions which Mr. Polk peremptorily
had closed, Great Britain might be able to listen to a compromise on the
line of the forty-ninth parallel. This compromise had three times been
offered her by diplomacy of United States under earlier administrations.
Great Britain stated that in view of her deep and abiding love of peace
and her deep and abiding admiration for America, she would resign her
claim of all of Oregon down to the Columbia; and more, she would accept
the forty-ninth parallel; provided she might have free navigation
rights upon the Columbia. In fact, this was precisely the memorandum of
agreement which eventually established the lines of the treaty as to
Oregon between Great Britain and the United States.

Mr. Calhoun is commonly credited with having brought about this treaty,
and with h