was willing to make almost any sacrifice rather than
offend him, but this I could not allow. The General drew himself up in
his chair and stared at me with a flash of his old look.

"You cannot?" he repeated; "you have affairs to attend to, I take it."

I tried to speak, but he rode me down.

"There is money to be made in that prosperous town of Louisville." He
did not understand the pain which his words caused me. He rose and laid
his hands affectionately on my shoulders. "Ah, Davy, commerce makes a
man timid. Do you forget the old days when I was the father and you the
son? Come! I will make you a fortune undreamed of, and you shall be my
fianancier once more."

"I had not thought of the money, General," I answered, "and I have always
been ready to leave my business to serve a friend."

"There, there," said the General, soothingly, "I know it. I would not
offend you. You shall have the commission, and you may come when it
pleases you."

He sat down again to write, but I restrained him.

"I cannot go, General," I said.

"Thunder and fury," cried the General, "a man might think you were a
weak-kneed Federalist." He stared at me, and stared again, and rose and
recoiled a step. "My God," he said, "you cannot be a Federalist, you
can't have marched to Kaskaskia and Vincennes, you can't have been a
friend of mine and have seen how the government of the United States has
treated me, and be a Federalist!"

It was an argument and an appeal which I had foreseen, yet which I knew
not how to answer. Suddenly there came, unbidden, his own counsel which
he had given me long ago, "Serve the people, as all true men should in a
Republic, but do not rely upon their gratitude." This man had bidden me
remember that.

"General," I said, trying to speak steadily, "it was you who gave me my
first love for the Republic. I remember you as you stood on the heights
above Kaskaskia waiting for the sun to go down, and you reminded me that
it was the nation's birthday. And you said that our nation was to be a
refuge of the oppressed of this earth, a nation made of all peoples, out
of all time. And you said that the lands beyond," and I pointed to the
West as he had done, "should belong to it until the sun sets on the sea
again."

I glanced at him, for he was silent, and in my life I can recall no
sadder moment than this. The General heard, but the man who had spoken
these words was gone forever. The eyes of this man before me were fi