rsuaded
all the armies to drop this pretension except the Anglian, and it was
finally arranged that the Tutonian and Anglian armies should cooperate
and take the field together under the Emperor's immediate command. A
week had elapsed before this force was prepared, but it finally started
out, General Fawlorn commanding the Anglian contingent.

Sam, who was still only convalescent and who had been assigned some
duties connected with forwarding despatches which left him a great deal
of leisure, looked with envious eyes upon the departing host. He had
never seen anything like the magnificence of the uniforms of the
Emperor's staff. He envied them their gilt and stars, and he envied
them the prospect of winning the great battles which Balderdash had
promised them. They marched at once upon a fortified town in which a
large force of Fencers were reported to be established. They besieged
it for six days according to all the rules of the Tutonian manual, and
finally entered it with great precautions, and found it absolutely
empty. At one village a regiment of Anglian Asiatics cut to pieces a
hundred natives who were alleged to be Fencers, but it transpired
afterward that none of them were armed. Balderdash was frightened half
to death, expecting his imperial master to protest against the lack of
opposition, but, strange to say, he took it very well and delivered
orations on all occasions extolling the prowess of his troops in
putting to flight the hordes of a vast empire. This campaign lasted a
month, and the expedition finally returned to the port and was received
with all the marks of glory that Tutonian officialism could command.
The Emperor at once cabled to several kings and all his relations that
Providence had graciously preserved him in the midst of great dangers
and brought his enterprise to a successful termination.

"They may be great soldiers," said Cleary one day to Sam, "but they
don't understand the newspaper business. The Emperor has a natural
talent for advertising, but it hasn't been properly cultivated. They
oughtn't to have let it leak out that there wasn't even a battle. Why,
Taffy says he could go from one end of the Empire to the other with a
squadron of cavalry! As for me, I shouldn't mind trying it without the
cavalry. When they did kill any people, it was like killing pheasants
at one of his famous battues. I wonder he wasn't photographed in the
middle of a pile o