rversity of heathen they had selected this impressive occasion for
showing their incurable barbarism and bad taste. Sam fairly shuddered.

"It's a sacrilege," he cried. "I believe that nothing short of
extermination will reclaim this unhappy land. They are calling down the
vengeance of heaven upon them."

They walked back to town with the foreign officer.

"He's a wonderful man, the Emperor," said he, in indifferent English.
"How quickly he changed his clothes, and what a compliment it was!"

"A sort of lightning-change artist," said Cleary. "He could make his
fortune at a continuous performance."

In the dark Sam blushed for his friend, but fortunately their companion
did not understand the allusion.

"You should have seen him when he visited our Queen," he said. "She
came to meet him in the uniform of a Tutonian hussar, breeches and all.
You can imagine how he was touched by it. That very afternoon he called
upon her dressed in the costume of one of our royal princesses with a
long satin train. It made him wonderfully popular. Our Queen responded
at once by making his infant daughters colonels of several of our
regiments. One of them is colonel of mine," he added proudly.

"What would you do if you went to war with Tutonia, and one of the kids
should order you to shoot on your own army?" asked Cleary. "It might be
embarrassing."

But the foreigner did not understand this either.

"And to think that these Porsslanese dogs have received him with
laughter!" said he.

At eleven o'clock on the same evening the Emperor was closeted with his
aged field-marshal, von Balderdash, in a handsomely furnished
sitting-room. A Turk's head had been set up in the middle of the room,
and His Majesty, dressed in the uniform of a cavalry general, was
engaged in making passes at it with a saber. He had already taken a
ride on horseback with his staff. The field-marshal stood wearily
leaning against the wall at the side of a desk piled up with papers.

"We have avenged the death of our ambassador," Balderdash was saying.
"We have sent out five punitive expeditions in all. Our quarter of the
imperial city shows the power of arms more completely than any other.
We have set the highest standard, and our army is the admiration of
all."

The count watched the face of his master as he spoke, but there was no
sign of satisfaction in it. The Emperor was out of humor.

"We have not done enough,"