you for telling me and stopping the
telegram. But between you and me, the circular ought to be suppressed
anyway. What business have these people to talk about equal rights and
the consent of the governed? The men who wrote the
Declaration--Jeffries and the rest--were mere civilians and these ideas
are purely civilian. Come, let's have them burned at once," and he
called up two or three soldiers, and in a few minutes the circulars
formed a mass of glowing ashes in the courtyard.

CHAPTER X

A Great Military Exploit

[Illustration]

One day while Sam was still waiting for Cleary to carry out his
designs, his secretary told him that a sergeant wished to see him, and
Sam directed him to show him into his office. The man was a rather
sinister-looking individual, and his speech betrayed his Anglian
origin.

"Colonel," said he, after the door was closed and they were alone, "I'm
only a sergeant promoted from the ranks, but I'm not just an ordinary
common soldier. I know a thing or two, and I've got a plan and I
thought perhaps you would be glad to 'ear of it. I 'ave the 'abit of
observing things, and most soldiers don't. Why, bless me, you can march
them into a country and out again, and with their eyes front, they
don't see a bloomin' thing. They're trained to see nothin'. They're
good for nothin' but to do as they're bid. I used to be in the army in
the old country, and once at Baldershot I saw Lord Bullsley come along
on horseback and stop two soldiers carryin' a soup-pail.

"'Give me a taste of that,' says he, and one of them runs off and gets
a ladle and gives him a taste. He spits it out and makes a face and
shouts:

"'Good heavens! man, you don't call that stuff soup, do you?'

"'No, sir,' says the man. 'It's dish-water that we was a-hemptyin'.'
That's the soldier all over again. He 'adn't sense enough to tell him
beforehand."

"I don't see, sergeant, what that has to do with me," said Sam curtly.

"Well, sir, perhaps it hasn't. But I only wanted to say that I ain't
that kind of a man. I sees and thinks for myself. Now I 'ear that
they've got a letter captured from Gomaldo askin' General Baluna for
reenforcements, and that they've got some letters from Baluna too, and
know his handwritin'. I only wanted to say that I used to be a
writin'-master and that I can copy any writin' goin' or any signature
either, so you can't tell them apart. Now why couldn't we fo