ore commencement--and later when the filtration of time brought the
fuller discussions in the magazines, and the world had discovered
General Kuroki, he was in the hills where magazines rarely came.

Upon the wall of General Prince's law office hung a map of the
Manchurian terrain, and each day that devotee of military affairs took
it down, and, with black ink and red ink, marked and remarked its
surface.

On one occasion, when Colonel Wallifarro found him so employed, the two
leaned over, with their heads close, in study of the situation.

"This Kuroki seems to be a man of mystery, General," began Wallifarro.
"And it has set me to speculating. The correspondents hint that he's not
a native Japanese. They tell us that he towers in physical as well as
mental stature above his colleagues."

"I can guess your thought, Tom," smiled General Prince. "And the same
idea occurred to me. You are thinking of the two Japanese agents who
came to the hills--and of McCalloway's sudden departure on a secret
journey. But it's only a romantic assumption. I followed the
Chinese-Japanese War with a close fidelity of detail--and Kuroki, though
less conspicuous than nowadays, was even then prominent."

Tom Wallifarro bit the end from a cigar and lighted it.

"It is none the less to be assumed that McCalloway is over there," he
observed. "Emperors don't send personal messengers half way round the
world to call unimportant men to the colours."

"My own guess is this, Tom," admitted the cavalryman. "McCalloway is on
Kuroki's staff. Presumably he learned all he knew under Dinwiddie--and
this campaign shows the earmarks of a similar scheme of generalship.
Kuropatkin sought to delay the issue of combat, until over the
restricted artery of the Siberian Railway he could augment his numbers
and assume the offensive with a superior force."

"And at the Yalu, Kuroki struck and forced the fight."

"Precisely. He had three divisions lying about Wiju. It was necessary
to cross the Yalu under the guns of Makau, and there we see the first
manifestation of such an audacious stroke as Dinwiddie himself might
have attempted."

Prince was pacing the floor now, talking rapidly, as he had done that
night when, with McCalloway, he discussed Dinwiddie, his military idol.

"Kuroki--I say Kuroki, whether he was the actual impulse or the
figurehead using the genius of a subordinate--threw the Twelfth Division
forward a day in advance of his full force. The