I read it well, and the applause I got was very gratifying to me.

I then wound up with these remarks:

"The war with the English nation, as a nation, is at an end.

The nation has retired from the field and the war. Before it can

be persuaded to return, war will have ceased. This campaign is

the only one that is going to be fought. It will be brief

--the briefest in history. Also the most destructive to life,

considered from the standpoint of proportion of casualties to

numbers engaged. We are done with the nation; henceforth we deal

only with the knights. English knights can be killed, but they

cannot be conquered. We know what is before us. While one of

these men remains alive, our task is not finished, the war is not

ended. We will kill them all." [Loud and long continued applause.]

I picketed the great embankments thrown up around our lines by

the dynamite explosion--merely a lookout of a couple of boys

to announce the enemy when he should appear again.

Next, I sent an engineer and forty men to a point just beyond

our lines on the south, to turn a mountain brook that was there,

and bring it within our lines and under our command, arranging

it in such a way that I could make instant use of it in an emergency.

The forty men were divided into two shifts of twenty each, and

were to relieve each other every two hours. In ten hours the

work was accomplished.

It was nightfall now, and I withdrew my pickets. The one who

had had the northern outlook reported a camp in sight, but visible

with the glass only. He also reported that a few knights had been

feeling their way toward us, and had driven some cattle across our

lines, but that the knights themselves had not come very near.

That was what I had been expecting. They were feeling us, you

see; they wanted to know if we were going to play that red terror

on them again. They would grow bolder in the night, perhaps.

I believed I knew what project they would attempt, because it was

plainly the thing I would attempt myself if I were in their places

and as ignorant as they were. I mentioned it to Clarence.

"I think you are right," said he; "it is the obvious thing for

them to try."

"Well, then," I said, "if they do it they are doomed."

"Certainly."

"They won't have the slightest show in the world."

"Of course they won't."

"It's dreadful, Clarence. It seems an awful pity."

The thing disturbed me so that I couldn't get any peace of mind

for thinking of it and worrying over it. So, at last, to quiet

my conscience, I framed this message to the knights:

TO THE HONORABLE THE COMMANDER OF THE INSURGENT

CHIVALRY OF ENGLAND: YOU fight in vain. We know

your strength--if one may call it by that name.

We know that at the utmost you cannot bring

against us above five and twenty thousand knights.

Therefore, you have no chance--none whatever.

Reflect: we are well equipped, well fortified, we

number 54. Fifty-four what? Men? No, MINDS--the

capablest in the world; a force against which

mere animal might may no more hope to prevail than

may the idle waves of the sea hope to prevail

against the granite barriers of England. Be advised.

We offer you your lives; for the sake of your

families, do not reject the gift. We offer you

this chance, and it is the last: throw down your

arms; surrender unconditionally to the Republic,

and all will be forgiven.

(Signed) THE BOSS.

I read it to Clarence, and said I proposed to send it by a flag

of truce. He laughed the sarcastic laugh he was born with, and said:

"Somehow it seems impossible for you to ever fully realize what

these nobilities are. Now let us save a little time and trouble.

Consider me the commander of the knights yonder. Now, then,

you are the flag of truce; approach and deliver me your message,

and I will give you your answer."

I humored the idea. I came forward under an imaginary guard of

the enemy's soldiers, produced my paper, and read it through.

For answer, Clarence struck the paper out of my hand, pursed up

a scornful lip and said with lofty disdain:

"Dismember me this animal, and return him in a basket to the

base-born knave who sent him; other answer have I none!"

How empty is theory in presence of fact! And this was just fact,

and nothing else. It was the thing that would have happened,

there was no getting around that. I tore up the paper and granted

my mistimed sentimentalities a permanent rest.

Then, to business. I tested the electric signals from the gatling

platform to the cave, and made sure that they were all right;

I tested and retested those which commanded the fences--these

were signals whereby I could break and renew the electric current

in each fence independently of the others at will. I placed the

brook-connection under the guard and authority of three of my

best boys, who would alternate in two-hour watches all night and

promptly obey my signal, if I should have occasion to give it

--three revolver-shots in quick succession. Sentry-duty was discarded

for the night, and the corral left empty of life; I ordered that

quiet be maintained in the cave, and the electric lights turned

down to a glimmer.

As soon as it was good and dark, I shut off the current from all

the fences, and then groped my way out to the embankment bordering

our side of the great dynamite ditch. I crept to the top of it

and lay there on the slant of the muck to watch. But it was

too dark to see anything. As for sounds, there were none. The

stillness was deathlike. True, there were the usual night-sounds

of the country--the whir of night-birds, the buzzing of insects,

the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine

--but these didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensified

it, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into the bargain.

I presently gave up looking, the night shut down so black, but

I kept my ears strained to catch the least suspicious sound, for

I judged I had only to wait, and I shouldn't be disappointed.

However, I had to wait a long time. At last I caught what you

may call in distinct glimpses of sound dulled metallic sound.

I pricked up my ears, then, and held my breath, for this was the

sort of thing I had been waiting for. This sound thickened, and

approached--from toward the north. Presently, I heard it at my

own level--the ridge-top of the opposite embankment, a hundred

feet or more away. Then I seemed to see a row of black dots appear

along that ridge--human heads? I couldn't tell; it mightn't be

anything at all; you can't depend on your eyes when your imagination

is out of focus. However, the question was soon settled. I heard

that metallic noise descending into the great ditch. It augmented

fast, it spread all along, and it unmistakably furnished me this

fact: an armed host was taking up its quarters in the ditch. Yes,

these people were arranging a little surprise party for us. We

could expect entertainment about dawn, possibly earlier.

I groped my way back to the corral now; I had seen enough. I went

to the platform and signaled to turn the current on to the two

inner fences. Then I went into the cave, and found everything

satisfactory there--nobody awake but the working-watch. I woke

Clarence and told him the great ditch was filling up with men,

and that I believed all the knights were coming for us in a body.

It was my notion that as soon as dawn approached we could expect

the ditch's ambuscaded thousands to swarm up over the embankment

and make an assault, and be followed immediately by the rest

of their army.

Clarence said:

"They will be wanting to send a scout or two in the dark to make

preliminary observations. Why not take the lightning off the

outer fences, and give them a chance?"

"I've already done it, Clarence. Did you ever know me to be

inhospitable?"

"No, you are a good heart. I want to go and--"

"Be a reception committee? I will go, too."

We crossed the corral and lay down together between the two inside

fences. Even the dim light of the cave had disordered our eyesight

somewhat, but the focus straightway began to regulate itself and

soon it was adjusted for present circumstances. We had had to feel

our way before, but we could make out to see the fence posts now.

We started a whispered conversation, but suddenly Clarence broke

off and said:

"What is that?"

"What is what?"

"That thing yonder."

"What thing--where?"

"There beyond you a little piece--dark something--a dull shape

of some kind--against the second fence."

I gazed and he gazed. I said:

"Could it be a man, Clarence?"

"No, I think not. If you notice, it looks a lit--why, it _is_

a man!--leaning on the fence."

"I certainly believe it is; let us go and see."

We crept along on our hands and knees until we were pretty close,

and then looked up. Yes, it was a man--a dim great figure in armor,

standing erect, with both hands on the upper wire--and, of course,

there was a smell of burning flesh. Poor fellow, dead as a

door-nail, and never knew what hurt him. He stood there like a

statue--no motion about him, except that his plumes swished about

a little in the night wind. We rose up and looked in through

the bars of his visor, but couldn't make out whether we knew him

or not--features too dim and shadowed.

We heard muffled sounds approaching, and we sank down to the ground

where we were. We made out another knight vaguely; he was coming

very stealthily, and feeling his way. He was near enough now for

us to see him put out a hand, find an upper wire, then bend and

step under it and over the lower one. Now he arrived at the

first knight--and started slightly when he discovered him. He

stood a moment--no doubt wondering why the other one didn't move

on; then he said, in a low voice, "Why dreamest thou here, good

Sir Mar--" then he laid his hand on the corpse's shoulder--and just

uttered a little soft moan and sunk down dead. Killed by a dead

man, you see--killed by a dead friend, in fact. There was something

awful about it.

These early birds came scattering along after each other, about

one every five minutes in our vicinity, during half an hour.

They brought no armor of offense but their swords; as a rule,

they carried the sword ready in the hand, and put it forward and

found the wires with it. We would now and then see a blue spark

when the knight that caused it was so far away as to be invisible

to us; but we knew what had happened, all the same; poor fellow,

he had touched a charged wire with his sword and been elected.

We had brief intervals of grim stillness, interrupted with piteous

regularity by the clash made by the falling of an iron-clad; and

this sort of thing was going on, right along, and was very creepy

there in the dark and lonesomeness.

We concluded to make a tour between the inner fences. We elected

to walk upright, for convenience's sake; we argued that if discerned,

we should be taken for friends rather than enemies, and in any case

we should be out of reach of swords, and these gentry did not seem

to have any spears along. Well, it was a curious trip. Everywhere

dead men were lying outside the second fence--not plainly visible,

but still visible; and we counted fifteen of those pathetic

statues--dead knights standing with their hands on the upper wire.

One thing seemed to be sufficiently demonstrated: our current

was so tremendous that it killed before the victim could cry out.

Pretty soon we detected a muffled and heavy sound, and next moment

we guessed what it was. It was a surprise in force coming! whispered

Clarence to go and wake the army, and notify it to wait in silence

in the cave for further orders. He was soon back, and we stood

by the inner fence and watched the silent lightning do its awful

work upon that swarming host. One could make out but little of

detail; but he could note that a black mass was piling itself up

beyond the second fence. That swelling bulk was dead men! Our

camp was enclosed with a solid wall of the dead--a bulwark,

a breastwork, of corpses, you may say. One terrible thing about

this thing was the absence of human voices; there were no cheers,

no war cries; being intent upon a surprise, these men moved as

noiselessly as they could; and always when the front rank was near

enough to their goal to make it proper for them to begin to get

a shout ready, of course they struck the fatal line and went down

without testifying.

I sent a current through the third fence now; and almost immediately

through the fourth and fifth, so quickly were the gaps filled up.

I believed the time was come now for my climax; I believed that

that whole army was in our trap. Anyway, it was high time to find

out. So I touched a button and set fifty electric suns aflame

on the top of our precipice.

Land, what a sight! We were enclosed in three walls of dead men!

All the other fences were pretty nearly filled with the living,

who were stealthily working their way forward through the wires.

The sudden glare paralyzed this host, petrified them, you may say,

with astonishment; there was just one instant for me to utilize

their immobility in, and I didn't lose the chance. You see, in

another instant they would have recovered their faculties, then

they'd have burst into a cheer and made a rush, and my wires

would have gone down before it; but that lost instant lost them

their opportunity forever; while even that slight fragment of time

was still unspent, I shot the current through all the fences and

struck the whole host dead in their tracks! _There_ was a groan

you could _hear_! It voiced the death-pang of eleven thousand men.

It swelled out on the night with awful pathos.

A glance showed that the rest of the enemy--perhaps ten thousand

strong--were between us and the encircling ditch, and pressing

forward to the assault. Consequently we had them _all!_ and had

them past help. Time for the last act of the tragedy. I fired

the three appointed revolver shots--which meant:

"Turn on the water!"

There was a sudden rush and roar, and in a minute the mountain

brook was raging through the big ditch and creating a river a

hundred feet wide and twenty-five deep.

"Stand to your guns, men! Open fire!"

The thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten

thousand. They halted, they stood their ground a moment against

that withering deluge of fire, then they broke, faced about and

swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. A full fourth

part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment;

the three-fourths reached it and plunged over--to death by drowning.

Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance

was totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four were

masters of England. Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us.

But how treacherous is fortune! In a little while--say an hour

--happened a thing, by my own fault, which--but I have no heart

to write that. Let the record end here.

CHAPTER XLIV

A POSTSCRIPT BY CLARENCE

I, Clarence, must write it for him. He proposed that we two

go out and see if any help could be accorded the wounded. I was

strenuous against the project. I said that if there were many,

we could do but little for them; and it would not be wise for us to

trust ourselves among them, anyway. But he could seldom be turned

from a purpose once formed; so we shut off the electric current

from the fences, took an escort along, climbed over the enclosing

ramparts of dead knights, and moved out upon the field. The first

wounded mall who appealed for help was sitting with his back

against a dead comrade. When The Boss bent over him and spoke

to him, the man recognized him and stabbed him. That knight was

Sir Meliagraunce, as I found out by tearing off his helmet. He

will not ask for help any more.

We carried The Boss to the cave and gave his wound, which was

not very serious, the best care we could. In this service we had

the help of Merlin, though we did not know it. He was disguised

as a woman, and appeared to be a simple old peasant goodwife.

In this disguise, with brown-stained face and smooth shaven, he

had appeared a few days after The Boss was hurt and offered to cook

for us, saying her people had gone off to join certain new camps

which the enemy were forming, and that she was starving. The Boss

had been getting along very well, and had amused himself with

finishing up his record.

We were glad to have this woman, for we were short handed. We

were in a trap, you see--a trap of our own making. If we stayed

where we were, our dead would kill us; if we moved out of our

defenses, we should no longer be invincible. We had conquered;

in turn we were conquered. The Boss recognized this; we all

recognized it. If we could go to one of those new camps and

patch up some kind of terms with the enemy--yes, but The Boss

could not go, and neither could I, for I was among the first that

were made sick by the poisonous air bred by those dead thousands.

Others were taken down, and still others. To-morrow--

_To-morrow._ It is here. And with it the end. About midnight

I awoke, and saw that hag making curious passes in the air about

The Boss's head and face, and wondered what it meant. Everybody

but the dynamo-watch lay steeped in sleep; there was no sound.

The woman ceased from her mysterious foolery, and started tip-toeing

toward the door. I called out:

"Stop! What have you been doing?"

She halted, and said with an accent of malicious satisfaction:

"Ye were conquerors; ye are conquered! These others are perishing

--you also. Ye shall all die in this place--every one--except _him_.

He sleepeth now--and shall sleep thirteen centuries. I am Merlin!"

Then such a delirium of silly laughter overtook him that he reeled

about like a drunken man, and presently fetched up against one

of our wires. His mouth is spread open yet; apparently he is still

laughing. I suppose the face will retain that petrified laugh until

the corpse turns to dust.

The Boss has never stirred--sleeps like a stone. If he does not

wake to-day we shall understand what kind of a sleep it is, and

his body will then be borne to a place in one of the remote recesses

of the cave where none will ever find it to desecrate it. As for

the rest of us--well, it is agreed that if any one of us ever

escapes alive from this place, he will write the fact here, and

loyally hide this Manuscript with The Boss, our dear good chief,

whose property it is, be he alive or dead.

THE END OF THE MANUSCRIPT

FINAL P.S. BY M.T.

The dawn was come when I laid the Manuscript aside. The rain

had almost ceased, the world was gray and sad, the exhausted storm

was sighing and sobbing itself to rest. I went to the stranger's

room, and listened at his door, which was slightly ajar. I could

hear his voice, and so I knocked. There was no answer, but I still

heard the voice. I peeped in. The man lay on his back in bed,

talking brokenly but with spirit, and punctuating with his arms,

which he thrashed about, restlessly, as sick people do in delirium.

I slipped in softly and bent over him. His mutterings and

ejaculations went on. I spoke--merely a word, to call his attention.

His glassy eyes and his ashy face were alight in an instant with

pleasure, gratitude, gladness, welcome:

"Oh, Sandy, you are come at last--how I have longed for you! Sit

by me--do not leave me--never leave me again, Sandy, never again.

Where is your hand?--give it me, dear, let me hold it--there

--now all is well, all is peace, and I am happy again--_we_ are happy

again, isn't it so, Sandy? You are so dim, so vague, you are but

a mist, a cloud, but you are _here_, and that is blessedness sufficient;

and I have your hand; don't take it away--it is for only a little

while, I shall not require it long.... Was that the child?...

Hello-Central!... she doesn't answer. Asleep, perhaps? Bring her

when she wakes, and let me touch her hands, her face, her hair,

and tell her good-bye.... Sandy! Yes, you are there. I lost

myself a moment, and I thought you were gone.... Have I been

sick long? It must be so; it seems months to me. And such dreams!

such strange and awful dreams, Sandy! Dreams that were as real

as reality--delirium, of course, but _so_ real! Why, I thought

the king was dead, I thought you were in Gaul and couldn't get

home, I thought there was a revolution; in the fantastic frenzy

of these dreams, I thought that Clarence and I and a handful of

my cadets fought and exterminated the whole chivalry of England!

But even that was not the strangest. I seemed to be a creature

out of a remote unborn age, centuries hence, and even _that_ was

as real as the rest! Yes, I seemed to have flown back out of that

age into this of ours, and then forward to it again, and was set

down, a stranger and forlorn in that strange England, with an

abyss of thirteen centuries yawning between me and you! between

me and my home and my friends! between me and all that is dear

to me, all that could make life worth the living! It was awful

--awfuler than you can ever imagine, Sandy. Ah, watch by me, Sandy

--stay by me every moment--_don't_ let me go out of my mind again;

death is nothing, let it come, but not with those dreams, not with

the torture of those hideous dreams--I cannot endure _that_ again....

Sandy?..."

He lay muttering incoherently some little time; then for a time he

lay silent, and apparently sinking away toward death. Presently

his fingers began to pick busily at the coverlet, and by that sign

I knew that his end was at hand with the first suggestion of the

death-rattle in his throat he started up slightly, and seemed

to listen: then he said:

"A bugle?... It is the king! The drawbridge, there! Man the

battlements!--turn out the--"

He was getting up his last "effect"; but he never finished it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT

by Mark Twain

1892

EXPLANATORY

The Colonel Mulberry Sellers here re-introduced to the public is the same

person who appeared as Eschol Sellers in the first edition of the tale

entitled "The Gilded Age," years ago, and as Beriah Sellers in the

subsequent editions of the same book, and finally as Mulberry Sellers in

the drama played afterward by John T. Raymond.

The name was changed from Eschol to Beriah to accommodate an Eschol

Sellers who rose up out of the vasty deeps of uncharted space and

preferred his request--backed by threat of a libel suit--then went his

way appeased, and came no more. In the play Beriah had to be dropped to

satisfy another member of the race, and Mulberry was substituted in the

hope that the objectors would be tired by that time and let it pass

unchallenged. So far it has occupied the field in peace; therefore we

chance it again, feeling reasonably safe, this time, under shelter of the

statute of limitations.

MARK TWAIN.

Hartford, 1891.

THE WEATHER IN THIS BOOK.

No weather will be found in this book. This is an attempt to pull a book

through without weather. It being the first attempt of the kind in

fictitious literature, it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth the

while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in just the

mood.

Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it

because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing breaks up an

author's progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the

weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad

for both reader and author.

Of course weather is necessary to a narrative of human experience.

That is conceded. But it ought to be put where it will not be in the

way; where it will not interrupt the flow of the narrative. And it ought

to be the ablest weather that can be had, not ignorant, poor-quality,

amateur weather. Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand

can turn out a good article of it. The present author can do only a few

trifling ordinary kinds of weather, and he cannot do those very good.

So it has seemed wisest to borrow such weather as is necessary for the

book from qualified and recognized experts--giving credit, of course.

This weather will be found over in the back part of the book, out of the

way. See Appendix. The reader is requested to turn over and help

himself from time to time as he goes along.

CHAPTER I.

It is a matchless morning in rural England. On a fair hill we see a

majestic pile, the ivied walls and towers of Cholmondeley Castle, huge

relic and witness of the baronial grandeurs of the Middle Ages. This is

one of the seats of the Earl of Rossmore, K. G. G. C. B. K. C. M. G.,

etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., who possesses twenty-two thousand acres of

English land, owns a parish in London with two thousand houses on its

lease-roll, and struggles comfortably along on an income of two hundred

thousand pounds a year. The father and founder of this proud old line

was William the Conqueror his very self; the mother of it was not

inventoried in history by name, she being merely a random episode and

inconsequential, like the tanner's daughter of Falaise.

In a breakfast room of the castle on this breezy fine morning there are

two persons and the cooling remains of a deserted meal. One of these

persons is the old lord, tall, erect, square-shouldered, white-haired,

stern-browed, a man who shows character in every feature, attitude, and

movement, and carries his seventy years as easily as most men carry

fifty. The other person is his only son and heir, a dreamy-eyed young

fellow, who looks about twenty-six but is nearer thirty. Candor,

kindliness, honesty, sincerity, simplicity, modesty--it is easy to see

that these are cardinal traits of his character; and so when you have

clothed him in the formidable components of his name, you somehow seem

to be contemplating a lamb in armor: his name and style being the

Honourable Kirkcudbright Llanover Marjorihanks Sellers Viscount-Berkeley,

of Cholmondeley Castle, Warwickshire. (Pronounced K'koobry Thlanover

Marshbanks Sellers Vycount Barkly, of Chumly Castle, Warrikshr.) He is

standing by a great window, in an attitude suggestive of respectful

attention to what his father is saying and equally respectful dissent

from the positions and arguments offered. The father walks the floor as

he talks, and his talk shows that his temper is away up toward summer

heat.

"Soft-spirited as you are, Berkeley, I am quite aware that when you have

once made up your mind to do a thing which your ideas of honor and

justice require you to do, argument and reason are (for the time being,)

wasted upon you--yes, and ridicule; persuasion, supplication, and command

as well. To my mind--"

"Father, if you will look at it without prejudice, without passion, you

must concede that I am not doing a rash thing, a thoughtless, wilful

thing, with nothing substantial behind it to justify it. I did not

create the American claimant to the earldom of Rossmore; I did not hunt

for him, did not find him, did not obtrude him upon your notice.

He found himself, he injected himself into our lives--"

"And has made mine a purgatory for ten years with his tiresome letters,

his wordy reasonings, his acres of tedious evidence,--"

"Which you would never read, would never consent to read. Yet in common

fairness he was entitled to a hearing. That hearing would either prove

he was the rightful earl--in which case our course would be plain--or it

would prove that he wasn't--in which case our course would be equally

plain. I have read his evidences, my lord. I have conned them well,

studied them patiently and thoroughly. The chain seems to be complete,

no important link wanting. I believe he is the rightful earl."

"And I a usurper--a--nameless pauper, a tramp! Consider what you are

saying, sir."

"Father, if he is the rightful earl, would you, could you--that fact

being established--consent to keep his titles and his properties from him

a day, an hour, a minute?"

"You are talking nonsense--nonsense--lurid idiotcy! Now, listen to me.

I will make a confession--if you wish to call it by that name. I did not

read those evidences because I had no occasion to--I was made familiar

with them in the time of this claimant's father and of my own father

forty years ago. This fellow's predecessors have kept mine more or less

familiar with them for close upon a hundred and fifty years. The truth

is, the rightful heir did go to America, with the Fairfax heir or about

the same time--but disappeared--somewhere in the wilds of Virginia, got

married, end began to breed savages for the Claimant market; wrote no

letters home; was supposed to be dead; his younger brother softly took

possession; presently the American did die, and straightway his eldest

product put in his claim--by letter--letter still in existence--and died

before the uncle in-possession found time--or maybe inclination--to

--answer. The infant son of that eldest product grew up--long interval,

you see--and he took to writing letters and furnishing evidences. Well,

successor after successor has done the same, down to the present idiot.

It was a succession of paupers; not one of them was ever able to pay his

passage to England or institute suit. The Fairfaxes kept their lordship

alive, and so they have never lost it to this day, although they live in

Maryland; their friend lost his by his own neglect. You perceive now,

that the facts in this case bring us to precisely this result: morally

the American tramp is rightful earl of Rossmore; legally he has no more

right than his dog. There now--are you satisfied?"

There was a pause, then the son glanced at the crest carved in the great

oaken mantel and said, with a regretful note in his voice:

"Since the introduction of heraldic symbols,--the motto of this house has

been 'Suum cuique'--to every man his own. By your own intrepidly frank

confession, my lord, it is become a sarcasm: If Simon Lathers--"

Keep that exasperating name to yourself! For ten years it has pestered

my eye--and tortured my ear; till at last my very footfalls time

themselves to the brain-racking rhythm of Simon Lathers!--Simon Lathers!

--Simon Lathers! And now, to make its presence in my soul eternal,

immortal, imperishable, you have resolved to--to--what is it you have

resolved to do?"

"To go to Simon Lathers, in America, and change places with him."

"What? Deliver the reversion of the earldom into his hands?"

"That is my purpose."

"Make this tremendous surrender without even trying the fantastic case in

the Lords?"

"Ye--s--" with hesitation and some embarrassment.

"By all that is amazing, I believe you are insane, my son. See here

--have you been training with that ass again--that radical, if you prefer

the term, though the words are synonymous--Lord Tanzy, of Tollmache?"

The son did not reply, and the old lord continued:

"Yes, you confess. That puppy, that shame to his birth and caste, who

holds all hereditary lordships and privilege to be usurpation, all

nobility a tinsel sham, all aristocratic institutions a fraud, all

inequalities in rank a legalized crime and an infamy, and no bread honest

bread that a man doesn't earn by his own work--work, pah!"--and the old

patrician brushed imaginary labor-dirt from his white hands. "You have

come to hold just those opinions yourself, suppose,"--he added with a

sneer.

A faint flush in the younger man's cheek told that the shot had hit and

hurt; but he answered with dignity:

"I have. I say it without shame--I feel none. And now my reason for

resolving to renounce my heirship without resistance is explained.

I wish to retire from what to me is a false existence, a false position,

and begin my life over again--begin it right--begin it on the level of

mere manhood, unassisted by factitious aids, and succeed or fail by pure

merit or the want of it. I will go to America, where all men are equal

and all have an equal chance; I will live or die, sink or swim, win or

lose as just a man--that alone, and not a single helping gaud or fiction

back of it."

"Hear, hear!" The two men looked each other steadily in the eye a moment

or two, then the elder one added, musingly, "Ab-so-lutely

cra-zy-ab-solutely!" After another silence, he said, as one who, long

troubled by clouds, detects a ray of sunshine, "Well, there will be one

satisfaction--Simon Lathets will come here to enter into his own, and I

will drown him in the horsepond. That poor devil--always so humble in

his letters, so pitiful, so deferential; so steeped in reverence for our

great line and lofty-station; so anxious to placate us, so prayerful for

recognition as a relative, a bearer in his veins of our sacred blood

--and withal so poor, so needy, so threadbare and pauper-shod as to

raiment, so despised, so laughed at for his silly claimantship by the

lewd American scum around him--ah, the vulgar, crawling, insufferable

tramp! To read one of his cringing, nauseating letters--well?"

This to a splendid flunkey, all in inflamed plush and buttons and

knee-breeches as to his trunk, and a glinting white frost-work of

ground-glass paste as to his head, who stood with his heels together and

the upper half of him bent forward, a salver in his hands:

"The letters, my lord."

My lord took them, and the servant disappeared.

"Among the rest, an American letter. From the tramp, of course. Jove,

but here's a change! No brown paper envelope this time, filched from a

shop, and carrying the shop's advertisement in the corner. Oh, no, a

proper enough envelope--with a most ostentatiously broad mourning

border--for his cat, perhaps, since he was a bachelor--and fastened with

red wax--a batch of it as big as a half-crown--and--and--our crest for a

seal!--motto and all. And the ignorant, sprawling hand is gone; he

sports a secretary, evidently--a secretary with a most confident swing

and flourish to his pen. Oh indeed, our fortunes are improving over

there--our meek tramp has undergone a metamorphosis."

"Read it, my lord, please."

"Yes, this time I will. For the sake of the cat:

14,042 SIXTEENTH. STREET,

WASHINGTON, May 2.

It is my painful duty to announce to you that the head of our illustrious

house is no more--The Right Honourable, The Most Noble, The Most Puissant

Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore having departed this life ("Gone at last

--this is unspeakably precious news, my son,") at his seat in the environs

of the hamlet of Duffy's Corners in the grand old State of Arkansas,

--and his twin brother with him, both being crushed by a log at a

smoke-house-raising, owing to carelessness on the part of all present,

referable to over-confidence and gaiety induced by overplus of

sour-mash--("Extolled be sour-mash, whatever that may be, eh Berkeley?")

five days ago, with no scion of our ancient race present to close his

eyes and inter him with the honors due his historic name and lofty

rank--in fact, he is on the ice yet, him and his brother--friends took a

collection for it. But I shall take immediate occasion to have their

noble remains shipped to you ("Great heavens!") for interment, with due

ceremonies and solemnities, in the family vault or mausoleum of our

house. Meantime I shall put up a pair of hatchments on my house-front,

and you will of course do the same at your several seats.

I have also to remind you that by this sad disaster I as sole heir,

inherit and become seized of all the titles, honors, lands, and goods of

our lamented relative, and must of necessity, painful as the duty is,

shortly require at the bar of the Lords restitution of these dignities

and properties, now illegally enjoyed by your titular lordship.

With assurance of my distinguished consideration and warm cousinly

regard, I remain

Your titular lordship's

Most obedient servant,

Mulberry Sellers Earl Rossmore.

"Im-mense! Come, this one's interesting. Why, Berkeley, his breezy

impudence is--is--why, it's colossal, it's sublime."

"No, this one doesn't seem to cringe much."

"Cringe--why, he doesn't know the meaning of the word. Hatchments! To

commemorate that sniveling tramp and his, fraternal duplicate. And he is

going to send me the remains. The late Claimant was a fool, but plainly

this new one's a maniac. What a name! Mulberry Sellers--there's music

for you, Simon Lathers--Mulberry Sellers--Mulberry Sellers--Simon

Lathers. Sounds like machinery working and churning. Simon Lathers,

Mulberry Sel--Are you going?"

"If I have your leave, father."

The old gentleman stood musing some time, after his son was gone. This

was his thought:

"He is a good boy, and lovable. Let him take his own course--as it would

profit nothing to oppose him--make things worse, in fact. My arguments

and his aunt's persuasions have failed; let us see what America can do

for us. Let us see what equality and hard-times can effect for the

mental health of a brain-sick young British lord. Going to renounce his

lordship and be a man! Yas!"

CHAPTER II.

COLONEL MULBERRY SELLERS--this was some days before he wrote his letter

to Lord Rossmore--was seated in his "library," which was also his

"drawing-room" and was also his "picture gallery" and likewise his

"work-shop." Sometimes he called it by one of these names, sometimes by

another, according to occasion and circumstance. He was constructing

what seemed to be some kind of a frail mechanical toy; and was apparently

very much interested in his work. He was a white-headed man, now, but

otherwise he was as young, alert, buoyant, visionary and enterprising as

ever. His loving old wife sat near by, contentedly knitting and

thinking, with a cat asleep in her lap. The room was large, light, and

had a comfortable look, in fact a home-like look, though the furniture

was of a humble sort and not over abundant, and the knickknacks and

things that go to adorn a living-room not plenty and not costly. But

there were natural flowers, and there was an abstract and unclassifiable

something about the place which betrayed the presence in the house of

somebody with a happy taste and an effective touch.

Even the deadly chromos on the walls were somehow without offence;

in fact they seemed to belong there and to add an attraction to the room

--a fascination, anyway; for whoever got his eye on one of them was like

to gaze and suffer till he died--you have seen that kind of pictures.

Some of these terrors were landscapes, some libeled the sea, some were

ostensible portraits, all were crimes. All the portraits were

recognizable as dead Americans of distinction, and yet, through labeling

added, by a daring hand, they were all doing duty here as "Earls of

Rossmore." The newest one had left the works as Andrew Jackson, but was

doing its best now, as "Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore, Present Earl."

On one wall was a cheap old railroad map of Warwickshire. This had been

newly labeled "The Rossmore Estates." On the opposite wall was another

map, and this was the most imposing decoration of the establishment and

the first to catch a stranger's attention, because of its great size.

It had once borne simply the title SIBERIA; but now the word "FUTURE" had

been written in front of that word. There were other additions, in red

ink--many cities, with great populations set down, scattered over the

vast-country at points where neither cities nor populations exist to-day.

One of these cities, with population placed at 1,500,000, bore the name

"Libertyorloffskoizalinski," and there was a still more populous one,

centrally located and marked "Capital," which bore the name

"Freedomolovnaivanovich."

The "mansion"--the Colonel's usual name for the house--was a rickety old

two-story frame of considerable size, which had been painted, some time

or other, but had nearly forgotten it. It was away out in the ragged

edge of Washington and had once been somebody's country place. It had a

neglected yard around it, with a paling fence that needed straightening

up, in places, and a gate that would stay shut. By the door-post were

several modest tin signs. "Col. Mulberry Sellers, Attorney at Law and

Claim Agent," was the principal one. One learned from the others that

the Colonel was a Materializer, a Hypnotizer, a Mind-Cure dabbler; and so

on. For he was a man who could always find things to do.

A white-headed negro man, with spectacles and damaged white cotton gloves

appeared in the presence, made a stately obeisance and announced:

"Marse Washington Hawkins, suh."

"Great Scott! Show him in, Dan'l, show him in."

The Colonel and his wife were on their feet in a moment, and

the next moment were joyfully wringing the hands of a stoutish,

discouraged-looking man whose general aspect suggested that he was

fifty years old, but whose hair swore to a hundred.

"Well, well, well, Washington, my boy, it is good to look at you again.

Sit down, sit down, and make yourself at home. There, now--why, you look

perfectly natural; aging a little, just a little, but you'd have known

him anywhere, wouldn't you, Polly?"

"Oh, yes, Berry, he's just like his pa would have looked if he'd lived.

Dear, dear, where have you dropped from? Let me see, how long is it

since--"

I should say it's all of fifteen` years, Mrs. Sellers."

"Well, well, how time does get away with us. Yes, and oh, the changes

that--"

There was a sudden catch of her voice and a trembling of the lip, the men

waiting reverently for her to get command of herself and go on; but

after a little struggle she turned away, with her apron to her eyes, and

softly disappeared.

"Seeing you made her think of the children, poor thing--dear, dear,

they're all dead but the youngest.

"But banish care, it's no time for it now--on with the dance, let joy be

unconfined is my motto, whether there's any dance to dance; or any joy to

unconfine--you'll be the healthier for it every time,--every time,

Washington--it's my experience, and I've seen a good deal of this world.

Come--where have you disappeared to all these years, and are you from

there, now, or where are you from?"

"I don't quite think you would ever guess, Colonel. Cherokee Strip."

"My land!"

"Sure as you live."

"You can't mean it. Actually living out there?"

"Well, yes, if a body may call it that; though it's a pretty strong term

for 'dobies and jackass rabbits, boiled beans and slap-jacks, depression,

withered hopes, poverty in all its varieties--"

"Louise out there?"

"Yes, and the children."

"Out there now?"

"Yes, I couldn't afford to bring them with me."

"Oh, I see,--you had to come--claim against the government. Make

yourself perfectly easy--I'll take care of that."

"But it isn't a claim against the government."

"No? Want to be postmaster? That's all right. Leave it to me. I'll

fix it."

"But it isn't postmaster--you're all astray yet."

"Well, good gracious, Washington, why don't you come out and tell me what

it is? What, do you want to be so reserved and distrustful with an old

friend like me, for? Don't you reckon I can keep a se--"

"There's no secret about it--you merely don't give me a chance to--"

"Now look here, old friend, I know the human race; and I know that when a

man comes to Washington, I don't care if it's from heaven, let alone

Cherokee-Strip, it's because he wants something. And I know that as a

rule he's not going to get it; that he'll stay and try--for another thing

and won't get that; the same luck with the next and the next and the

next; and keeps on till he strikes bottom, and is too poor and ashamed to

go back, even to Cherokee Strip; and at last his heart breaks--and they

take up a collection and bury him. There--don't interrupt me, I know

what I'm talking about. Happy and prosperous in the Far West wasn't I?

You know that. Principal citizen of Hawkeye, looked up to by everybody,

kind of an autocrat, actually a kind of an autocrat, Washington. Well,

nothing would do but I must go Minister to St. James, the Governor and

everybody insisting, you know, and so at last I consented--no getting out

of it, had to do it, so here I came. A day too late, Washington. Think

of that--what little things change the world's history--yes, sir, the

place had been filled. Well, there I was, you see. I offered to

compromise and go to Paris. The President was very sorry and all that,

but that place, you see, didn't belong to the West, so there I was again.

There was no help for it, so I had to stoop a little--we all reach the

day some time or other when we've got to do that, Washington, and it's

not a bad thing for us, either, take it by and large and all around

--I had to stoop a little and offer to take Constantinople. Washington,

consider this--for it's perfectly true--within a month I asked for China;

within another month I begged for Japan; one year later I was away down,

down, down, supplicating with tears and anguish for the bottom office in

the gift of the government of the United States--Flint-Picker in the

cellars of the War Department. And by George I didn't get it."

"Flint-Picker?"

"Yes. Office established in the time of the Revolution, last century.

The musket-flints for the military posts were supplied from the capitol.

They do it yet; for although the flint-arm has gone out and the forts

have tumbled down, the decree hasn't been repealed--been overlooked and

forgotten, you see--and so the vacancies where old Ticonderoga and others

used to stand, still get their six quarts of gun-flints a year just the

same."

Washington said musingly after a pause:

"How strange it seems--to start for Minister to England at twenty

thousand a year and fail for flintpicker at--"

"Three dollars a week. It's human life, Washington--just an epitome of

human ambition, and struggle, and the outcome: you aim for the palace and

get drowned in the sewer."

There was another meditative silence. Then Washington said, with earnest

compassion in his voice--

"And so, after coming here, against your inclination, to satisfy your

sense of patriotic duty and appease a selfish public clamor, you get

absolutely nothing for it."

"Nothing?" The Colonel had to get up and stand, to get room for his

amazement to expand. "Nothing, Washington? I ask you this: to be a

perpetual Member and the only Perpetual Member of a Diplomatic Body

accredited to the greatest country on earth do you call that nothing?"

It was Washington's turn to be amazed. He was stricken dumb; but the

wide-eyed wonder, the reverent admiration expressed in his face were more

eloquent than any words could have been. The Colonel's wounded spirit

was healed and he resumed his seat pleased and content. He leaned

forward and said impressively:

"What was due to a man who had become forever conspicuous by an

experience without precedent in the history of the world?--a man made

permanently and diplomatically sacred, so to speak, by having been

connected, temporarily, through solicitation, with every single

diplomatic post in the roster of this government, from Envoy

Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James all

the way down to Consul to a guano rock in the Straits of Sunda--salary

payable in guano--which disappeared by volcanic convulsion the day before

they got down to my name in the list of applicants. Certainly something

august enough to be answerable to the size of this unique and memorable

experience was my due, and I got it. By the common voice of this

community, by acclamation of the people, that mighty utterance which

brushes aside laws and legislation, and from whose decrees there is no

appeal, I was named Perpetual Member of the Diplomatic Body representing

the multifarious sovereignties and civilizations of the globe near the

republican court of the United States of America. And they brought me

home with a torchlight procession."

"It is wonderful, Colonel, simply wonderful."

"It's the loftiest official position in the whole earth."

"I should think so--and the most commanding."

"You have named the word. Think of it. I frown, and there is war; I

smile, and contending nations lay down their arms."

"It is awful. The responsibility, I mean."

"It is nothing. Responsibility is no burden to me; I am used to it; have

always been used to it."

"And the work--the work! Do you have to attend all the sittings?"

"Who, I? Does the Emperor of Russia attend the conclaves of the

governors of the provinces? He sits at home, and indicates his

pleasure."

Washington was silent a moment, then a deep sigh escaped him.

"How proud I was an hour ago; how paltry seems my little promotion now!

Colonel, the reason I came to Washington is,--I am Congressional Delegate

from Cherokee Strip!"

The Colonel sprang to his feet and broke out with prodigious enthusiasm:

"Give me your hand, my boy--this is immense news! I congratulate you

with all my heart. My prophecies stand confirmed. I always said it was

in you. I always said you were born for high distinction and would

achieve it. You ask Polly if I didn't."

Washington was dazed by this most unexpected demonstration.

"Why, Colonel, there's nothing to it. That little narrow, desolate,

unpeopled, oblong streak of grass and gravel, lost in the remote wastes

of the vast continent--why, it's like representing a billiard table--a

discarded one."

"Tut-tut, it's a great, it's a staving preferment, and just opulent with

influence here."

"Shucks, Colonel, I haven't even a vote."

"That's nothing; you can make speeches."

"No, I can't. The population's only two hundred--"

"That's all right, that's all right--"

"And they hadn't any right to elect me; we're not even a territory,

there's no Organic Act, the government hasn't any official knowledge of

us whatever."

"Never mind about that; I'll fix that. I'll rush the thing through, I'll

get you organized in no time."

"Will you, Colonel?--it's too good of you; but it's just your old

sterling self, the same old ever-faithful friend," and the grateful tears

welled up in Washington's eyes.

"It's just as good as done, my boy, just as good as done. Shake hands.

We'll hitch teams together, you and I, and we'll make things hum!"

CHAPTER III.

Mrs. Sellers returned, now, with her composure restored, and began to ask

after Hawkins's wife, and about his children, and the number of them, and

so on, and her examination of the witness resulted in a circumstantial

history of the family's ups and downs and driftings to and fro in the far

West during the previous fifteen years. There was a message, now, from

out back, and Colonel Sellers went out there in answer to it. Hawkins

took this opportunity to ask how the world had been using the Colonel

during the past half-generation.

"Oh, it's been using him just the same; it couldn't change its way of

using him if it wanted to, for he wouldn't let it."

"I can easily believe that, Mrs. Sellers."

"Yes, you see, he doesn't change, himself--not the least little bit in

the world--he's always Mulberry Sellers."

"I can see that plain enough."

"Just the same old scheming, generous, good-hearted, moonshiny, hopeful,

no-account failure he always was, and still everybody likes him just as

well as if he was the shiningest success."

"They always did: and it was natural, because he was so obliging and

accommodating, and had something about him that made it kind of easy to

ask help of him, or favors--you didn't feel shy, you know, or have that

wish--you--didn't--have--to--try feeling that you have with other

people."

"It's just so, yet; and a body wonders at it, too, because he's been

shamefully treated, many times, by people that had used him for a ladder

to climb up by, and then kicked him down when they didn't need him any

more. For a time you can see he's hurt, his pride's wounded, because he

shrinks away from that thing and don't want to talk about it--and so I

used to think now he's learned something and he'll be more careful

hereafter--but laws! in a couple of weeks he's forgotten all about it,

and any selfish tramp out of nobody knows where can come and put up a

poor mouth and walk right into his heart with his boots on."

"It must try your patience pretty sharply sometimes."

"Oh, no, I'm used to it; and I'd rather have him so than the other way.

When I call him a failure, I mean to the world he's a failure; he isn't

to me. I don't know as I want him different much different, anyway.

I have to scold him some, snarl at him, you might even call it, but I

reckon I'd do that just the same, if he was different--it's my make.

But I'm a good deal less snarly and more contented when he's a failure

than I am when he isn't."

"Then he isn't always a failure," said Hawking, brightening.

"Him? Oh, bless you, no. He makes a strike, as he calls it, from time

to time. Then's my time to fret and fuss. For the money just flies

--first come first served. Straight off, he loads up the house with

cripples and idiots and stray cats and all the different kinds of poor

wrecks that other people don't want and he does, and then when the

poverty comes again I've got to clear the most of them out or we'd

starve; and that distresses him, and me the same, of course.

"Here's old Dan'l and old Jinny, that the sheriff sold south one of the

times that we got bankrupted before the war--they came wandering back

after the peace, worn out and used up on the cotton plantations,

helpless, and not another lick of work left in their old hides for the

rest of this earthly pilgrimage--and we so pinched, oh so pinched for the

very crumbs to keep life in us, and he just flung the door wide, and the

way he received them you'd have thought they had come straight down from

heaven in answer to prayer. I took him one side and said, 'Mulberry we

can't have them--we've nothing for ourselves--we can't feed them.'

He looked at me kind of hurt, and said, 'Turn them out?--and they've come

to me just as confident and trusting as--as--why Polly, I must have

bought that confidence sometime or other a long time ago, and given my

note, so to speak--you don't get such things as a gift--and how am I

going to go back on a debt like that? And you see, they're so poor,

and old, and friendless, and--' But I was ashamed by that time, and shut

him off, and somehow felt a new courage in me, and so I said, softly,

'We'll keep them--the Lord will provide.' He was glad, and started to

blurt out one of those over-confident speeches of his, but checked

himself in time, and said humbly, 'I will, anyway.' It was years and

years and years ago. Well, you see those old wrecks are here yet."

"But don't they do your housework?"

"Laws! The idea. They would if they could, poor old things, and perhaps

they think they do do some of it. But it's a superstition. Dan'l waits

on the front door, and sometimes goes on an errand; and sometimes you'll

see one or both of them letting on to dust around in here--but that's

because there's something they want to hear about and mix their gabble

into. And they're always around at meals, for the same reason. But the

fact is, we have to keep a young negro girl just to take care of them,

and a negro woman to do the housework and help take care of them."

"Well, they ought to be tolerably happy, I should think."

"It's no name for it. They quarrel together pretty much all the time

--most always about religion, because Dan'l's a Dunker Baptist and Jinny's

a shouting Methodist, and Jinny believes in special Providences and Dan'l

don't, because he thinks he's a kind of a free-thinker--and they play and

sing plantation hymns together, and talk and chatter just eternally and

forever, and are sincerely fond of each other and think the world of

Mulberry, and he puts up patiently with all their spoiled ways and

foolishness, and so--ah, well, they're happy enough if it comes to that.

And I don't mind--I've got used to it. I can get used to anything, with

Mulberry to help; and the fact is, I don't much care what happens, so

long as he's spared to me."

"Well, here's to him, and hoping he'll make another strike soon."

"And rake in the lame, the halt and the blind, and turn the house into a

hospital again? It's what he would do. I've seen aplenty of that and

more. No, Washington, I want his strikes to be mighty moderate ones the

rest of the way down the vale."

"Well, then, big strike or little strike, or no strike at all, here's

hoping he'll never lack for friends--and I don't reckon he ever will

while there's people around who know enough to--"

"Him lack for friends!" and she tilted her head up with a frank pride--

"why, Washington, you can't name a man that's anybody that isn't fond of

him. I'll tell you privately, that I've had Satan's own time to keep

them from appointing him to some office or other. They knew he'd no

business with an office, just as well as I did, but he's the hardest man

to refuse anything to, a body ever saw. Mulberry Sellers with an office!

laws goodness, you know what that would be like. Why, they'd come from

the ends of the earth to see a circus like that. I'd just as lieves be

married to Niagara Falls, and done with it." After a reflective pause

she added--having wandered back, in the interval, to the remark that had

been her text: "Friends?--oh, indeed, no man ever had more; and such

friends: Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Johnston, Longstreet, Lee--many's the

time they've sat in that chair you're sitting in--" Hawkins was out of it

instantly, and contemplating it with a reverential surprise, and with the

awed sense of having trodden shod upon holy ground--

"They!" he said.

"Oh, indeed, yes, a many and a many a time."

He continued to gaze at the chair fascinated, magnetized; and for once in

his life that continental stretch of dry prairie which stood for his

imagination was afire, and across it was marching a slanting flamefront

that joined its wide horizons together and smothered the skies with

smoke. He was experiencing what one or another drowsing, geographically

ignorant alien experiences every day in the year when he turns a dull and

indifferent eye out of the car window and it falls upon a certain

station-sign which reads "Stratford-on-Avon!" Mrs. Sellers went

gossiping comfortably along:

"Oh, they like to hear him talk, especially if their load is getting

rather heavy on one shoulder and they want to shift it. He's all air,

you know,--breeze, you may say--and he freshens them up; it's a trip to

the country, they say. Many a time he's made General Grant laugh--and

that's a tidy job, I can tell you, and as for Sheridan, his eye lights up

and he listens to Mulberry Sellers the same as if he was artillery.

You see, the charm about Mulberry is, he is so catholic and unprejudiced

that he fits in anywhere and everywhere. It makes him powerful good

company, and as popular as scandal. You go to the White House when the

President's holding a general reception--sometime when Mulberry's there.

Why, dear me, you can't tell which of them it is that's holding that

reception."

"Well, he certainly is a remarkable man--and he always was. Is he

religious?"

"Clear to his marrow--does more thinking and reading on that subject than

any other except Russia and Siberia: thrashes around over the whole

field, too; nothing bigoted about him."

"What is his religion?"

"He--" She stopped, and was lost for a moment or two in thinking, then

she said, with simplicity, "I think he was a Mohammedan or something last

week."

Washington started down town, now, to bring his trunk, for the hospitable

Sellerses would listen to no excuses; their house must be his home during

the session. The Colonel returned presently and resumed work upon his

plaything. It was finished when Washington got back.

"There it is," said the Colonel, "all finished."

"What is it for, Colonel?"

"Oh, it's just a trifle. Toy to amuse the children."

Washington examined it.

"It seems to be a puzzle."

"Yes, that's what it is. I call it Pigs in the Clover. Put them in--see

if you can put them in the pen."

After many failures Washington succeeded, and was as pleased as a child.

"It's wonderfully ingenious, Colonel, it's ever so clever and

interesting--why, I could play with it all day. What are you going to do

with it?"

"Oh, nothing. Patent it and throw it aside."

"Don't you do anything of the kind. There's money in that thing."

A compassionate look traveled over the Colonel's countenance, and he

said:

"Money--yes; pin money: a couple of hundred thousand, perhaps. Not

more."

Washington's eyes blazed.

"A couple of hundred thousand dollars! do you call that pin money?"

The colonel rose and tip-toed his way across the room, closed a door that

was slightly ajar, tip-toed his way to his seat again, and said, under

his breath:

"You can keep a secret?"

Washington nodded his affirmative, he was too awed to speak.

"You have heard of materialization--materialization of departed spirits?"

Washington had heard of it.

"And probably didn't believe in it; and quite right, too. The thing as

practised by ignorant charlatans is unworthy of attention or respect--

where there's a dim light and a dark cabinet, and a parcel of sentimental

gulls gathered together, with their faith and their shudders and their

tears all ready, and one and the same fatty degeneration of protoplasm

and humbug comes out and materializes himself into anybody you want,

grandmother, grandchild, brother-in-law, Witch of Endor, John Milton,

Siamese twins, Peter the Great, and all such frantic nonsense--no, that

is all foolish and pitiful. But when a man that is competent brings the

vast powers of science to bear, it's a different matter, a totally

different matter, you see. The spectre that answers that call has come

to stay. Do you note the commercial value of that detail?"

"Well, I--the--the truth is, that I don't quite know that I do. Do you

mean that such, being permanent, not transitory, would give more general

satisfaction, and so enhance the price--of tickets to the show--"

"Show? Folly--listen to me; and get a good grip on your breath, for you

are going to need it. Within three days I shall have completed my

method, and then--let the world stand aghast, for it shall see marvels.

Washington, within three days--ten at the outside--you shall see me call

the dead of any century, and they will arise and walk. Walk?--they shall

walk forever, and never die again. Walk with all the muscle and spring

of their pristine vigor."

"Colonel! Indeed it does take one's breath away."

"Now do you see the money that's in it?"

"I'm--well, I'm--not really sure that I do."

Great Scott, look here. I shall have a monopoly; they'll all belong to

me, won't they? Two thousand policemen in the city of New York. Wages,

four dollars a day. I'll replace them with dead ones at half the money.

"Oh, prodigious! I never thought of that. F-o-u-r thousand dollars a

day. Now I do begin to see! But will dead policemen answer?"

"Haven't they--up to this time?"

"Well, if you put it that way--"

"Put it any way you want to. Modify it to suit yourself, and my lads

shall still be superior. They won't eat, they won't drink--don't need

those things; they won't wink for cash at gambling dens and unlicensed

rum-holes, they won't spark the scullery maids; and moreover the bands of

toughs that ambuscade them on lonely beats, and cowardly shoot and knife

them will only damage the uniforms and not live long enough to get more

than a momentary satisfaction out of that."

"Why, Colonel, if you can furnish policemen, then of course--"

"Certainly--I can furnish any line of goods that's wanted. Take the

army, for instance--now twenty-five thousand men; expense, twenty-two

millions a year. I will dig up the Romans, I will resurrect the Greeks,

I will furnish the government, for ten millions a year, ten thousand

veterans drawn from the victorious legions of all the ages--soldiers that

will chase Indians year in and year out on materialized horses, and cost

never a cent for rations or repairs. The armies of Europe cost two

billions a year now--I will replace them all for a billion. I will dig

up the trained statesmen of all ages and all climes, and furnish this

country with a Congress that knows enough to come in out of the rain--

a thing that's never happened yet, since the Declaration of Independence,

and never will happen till these practically dead people are replaced

with the genuine article. I will restock the thrones of Europe with the

best brains and the best morals that all the royal sepulchres of all the

centuries can furnish--which isn't promising very much--and I'll divide

the wages and the civil list, fair and square, merely taking my half

and--"

"Colonel, if the half of this is true, there's millions in it--millions."

"Billions in it--billions; that's what you mean. Why, look here; the

thing is so close at hand, so imminent, so absolutely immediate, that if

a man were to come to me now and say, Colonel, I am a little short, and

if you could lend me a couple of billion dollars for--come in!"

This in answer to a knock. An energetic looking man bustled in with a

big pocket-book in his hand, took a paper from it and presented it, with

the curt remark:

"Seventeenth and last call--you want to out with that three dollars and

forty cents this time without fail, Colonel Mulberry Sellers."

The Colonel began to slap this pocket and that one, and feel here and

there and everywhere, muttering:

"What have I done with that wallet?--let me see--um--not here, not there

--Oh, I must have left it in the kitchen; I'll just run and--"

"No you won't--you'll stay right where you are. And you're going to

disgorge, too--this time."

Washington innocently offered to go and look. When he was gone the

Colonel said:

"The fact is, I've got to throw myself on your indulgence just this once

more, Suggs; you see the remittances I was expecting--"

"Hang the remittances--it's too stale--it won't answer. Come!"

The Colonel glanced about him in despair. Then his face lighted; he ran

to the wall and began to dust off a peculiarly atrocious chromo with his

handkerchief. Then he brought it reverently, offered it to the

collector, averted his face and said:

"Take it, but don't let me see it go. It's the sole remaining Rembrandt

that--"

"Rembrandt be damned, it's a chromo."

"Oh, don't speak of it so, I beg you. It's the only really great

original, the only supreme example of that mighty school of art which--"

"Art! It's the sickest looking thing I--"

The colonel was already bringing another horror and tenderly dusting it.

"Take this one too--the gem of my collection--the only genuine Fra

Angelico that--"

"Illuminated liver-pad, that's what it is. Give it here--good day--

people will think I've robbed a' nigger barber-shop."

As he slammed the door behind him the Colonel shouted with an anguished

accent--

"Do please cover them up--don't let the damp get at them. The delicate

tints in the Angelico--"

But the man was gone.

Washington re-appeared and said he had looked everywhere, and so had Mrs.

Sellers and the servants, but in vain; and went on to say he wished he

could get his eye on a certain man about this time--no need to hunt up

that pocket-book then. The Colonel's interest was awake at once.

"What man?"

"One-armed Pete they call him out there--out in the Cherokee country I

mean. Robbed the bank in Tahlequah."

"Do they have banks in Tahlequah?"

"Yes--a bank, anyway. He was suspected of robbing it. Whoever did it

got away with more than twenty thousand dollars. They offered a reward

of five thousand. I believe I saw that very man, on my way east."

"No--is that so?

"I certainly saw a man on the train, the first day I struck the railroad,

that answered the description pretty exactly--at least as to clothes and

a lacking arm."

"Why don't you get him arrested and claim the reward?"

"I couldn't. I had to get a requisition, of course. But I meant to stay

by him till I got my chance."

"Well?"

"Well, he left the train during the night some time."

"Oh, hang it, that's too bad."

"Not so very bad, either."

"Why?"

"Because he came down to Baltimore in the very train I was in, though I

didn't know it in time. As we moved out of the station I saw him going

toward the iron gate with a satchel in his hand."

"Good; we'll catch him. Let's lay a plan."

"Send description to the Baltimore police?"

"Why, what are you talking about? No. Do you want them to get the

reward?"

"What shall we do, then?"

The Colonel reflected.

"I'll tell you. Put a personal in the Baltimore Sun. Word it like this:

"A. DROP ME A LINE, PETE."

"Hold on. Which arm has he lost?"

"The right."

"Good. Now then--

"A. DROP ME A LINE, PETE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE to write with your left hand.

Address X. Y. Z., General Postoffice, Washington. From YOU KNOW WHO."

"There--that'll fetch him."

"But he won't know who--will he?"

"No, but he'll want to know, won't he?"

"Why, certainly--I didn't think of that. What made you think of it?"

"Knowledge of human curiosity. Strong trait, very strong trait."

"Now I'll go to my room and write it out and enclose a dollar and tell

them to print it to the worth of that."

CHAPTER IV.

The day wore itself out. After dinner the two friends put in a long and

harassing evening trying to decide what to do with the five thousand

dollars reward which they were going to get when they should find One-

Armed Pete, and catch him, and prove him to be the right person, and

extradite him, and ship him to Tahlequah in the Indian Territory. But

there were so many dazzling openings for ready cash that they found it

impossible to make up their minds and keep them made up. Finally, Mrs.

Sellers grew very weary of it all, and said:

"What is the sense in cooking a rabbit before it's caught?"

Then the matter was dropped, for the time being, and all went to bed.

Next morning, being persuaded by Hawkins, the colonel made drawings and

specifications and went down and applied for a patent for his toy puzzle,

and Hawkins took the toy itself and started out to see what chance there

might be to do something with it commercially. He did not have to go

far. In a small old wooden shanty which had once been occupied as a

dwelling by some humble negro family he found a keen-eyed Yankee engaged

in repairing cheap chairs and other second-hand furniture. This man

examined the toy indifferently; attempted to do the puzzle; found it not

so easy as he had expected; grew more interested, and finally

emphatically so; achieved a success at last, and asked:

"Is it patented?"

"Patent applied for."

"That will answer. What do you want for it?"

"What will it retail for?"

"Well, twenty-five cents, I should think."

"What will you give for the exclusive right?"

"I couldn't give twenty dollars, if I had to pay cash down; but I'll tell

you what I'll do. I'll make it and market it, and pay you five cents

royalty on each one."

Washington sighed. Another dream disappeared; no money in the thing.

So he said:

"All right, take it at that. Draw me a paper." He went his way with the

paper, and dropped the matter out of his mind dropped it out to make room

for further attempts to think out the most promising way to invest his

half of the reward, in case a partnership investment satisfactory to both

beneficiaries could not be hit upon.

He had not been very long at home when Sellers arrived sodden with grief

and booming with glad excitement--working both these emotions

successfully, sometimes separately, sometimes together. He fell on

Hawkins's neck sobbing, and said:

"Oh, mourn with me my friend, mourn for my desolate house: death has

smitten my last kinsman and I am Earl of Rossmore--congratulate me!"

He turned to his wife, who had entered while this was going on, put his

arms about her and said--"You will bear up, for my sake, my lady--it had

to happen, it was decreed."

She bore up very well, and said:

"It's no great loss. Simon Lathers was a poor well-meaning useless thing

and no account, and his brother never was worth shucks."

The rightful earl continued:

"I am too much prostrated by these conflicting griefs and joys to be able

to concentrate my mind upon affairs; I will ask our good friend here to

break the news by wire or post to the Lady Gwendolen and instruct her

to--"

"What Lady Gwendolen?"

"Our poor daughter, who, alas!--"

"Sally Sellers? Mulberry Sellers, are you losing your mind?"

"There--please do not forget who you are, and who I am; remember your own

dignity, be considerate also of mine. It were best to cease from using

my family name, now, Lady Rossmore."

"Goodness gracious, well, I never! What am I to call you then?"

"In private, the ordinary terms of endearment will still be admissible,

to some degree; but in public it will be more becoming if your ladyship

will speak to me as my lord, or your lordship, and of me as Rossmore, or

the Earl, or his Lordship, and--"

"Oh, scat! I can't ever do it, Berry."

"But indeed you must, my love--we must live up to our altered position

and submit with what grace we may to its requirements."

"Well, all right, have it your own way; I've never set my wishes against

your commands yet, Mul--my lord, and it's late to begin now, though to my

mind it's the rottenest foolishness that ever was."

"Spoken like my own true wife! There, kiss and be friends again."

"But--Gwendolen! I don't know how I am ever going to stand that name.

Why, a body wouldn't know Sally Sellers in it. It's too large for her;

kind of like a cherub in an ulster, and it's a most outlandish sort of a

name, anyway, to my mind."

"You'll not hear her find fault with it, my lady."

"That's a true word. She takes to any kind of romantic rubbish like she

was born to it. She never got it from me, that's sure. And sending her

to that silly college hasn't helped the matter any--just the other way."

"Now hear her, Hawkins! Rowena-Ivanhoe College is the selectest and most

aristocratic seat of learning for young ladies in our country. Under no

circumstances can a girl get in there unless she is either very rich and

fashionable or can prove four generations of what may be called American

nobility. Castellated college-buildings--towers and turrets and an

imitation moat--and everything about the place named out of Sir Walter

Scott's books and redolent of royalty and state and style; and all the

richest girls keep phaetons, and coachmen in livery, and riding-horses,

with English grooms in plug hats and tight-buttoned coats, and top-boots,

and a whip-handle without any whip to it, to ride sixty-three feet behind

them--"

"And they don't learn a blessed thing, Washington Hawkins, not a single

blessed thing but showy rubbish and un-american pretentiousness. But

send for the Lady Gwendolen--do; for I reckon the peerage regulations

require that she must come home and let on to go into seclusion and mourn

for those Arkansas blatherskites she's lost."

"My darling! Blatherskites? Remember--noblesse oblige."

"There, there--talk to me in your own tongue, Ross--you don't know any

other, and you only botch it when you try. Oh, don't stare--it was a

slip, and no crime; customs of a life-time can't be dropped in a second.

Rossmore--there, now, be appeased, and go along with you and attend to

Gwendolen. Are you going to write, Washington?--or telegraph?"

"He will telegraph, dear."

"I thought as much," my lady muttered, as she left the room. "Wants it

so the address will have to appear on the envelop. It will just make a

fool of that child. She'll get it, of course, for if there are any other

Sellerses there they'll not be able to claim it. And just leave her

alone to show it around and make the most of it. Well, maybe she's

forgivable for that. She's so poor and they're so rich, of course she's

had her share of snubs from the livery-flunkey sort, and I reckon it's

only human to want to get even."

Uncle Dan'l was sent with the telegram; for although a conspicuous object

in a corner of the drawing-room was a telephone hanging on a transmitter,

Washington found all attempts to raise the central office vain. The

Colonel grumbled something about its being "always out of order when

you've got particular and especial use for it," but he didn't explain

that one of the reasons for this was that the thing was only a dummy and

hadn't any wire attached to it. And yet the Colonel often used it--when

visitors were present--and seemed to get messages through it. Mourning

paper and a seal were ordered, then the friends took a rest.

Next afternoon, while Hawkins, by request, draped Andrew Jackson's

portrait with crape, the rightful earl, wrote off the family bereavement

to the usurper in England--a letter which we have already read. He also,

by letter to the village authorities at Duffy's Corners, Arkansas, gave

order that the remains of the late twins be embalmed by some St. Louis

expert and shipped at once to the usurper--with bill. Then he drafted

out the Rossmore arms and motto on a great sheet of brown paper, and he

and Hawkins took it to Hawkins's Yankee furniture-mender and at the end

of an hour came back with a couple of stunning hatchments, which they

nailed up on the front of the house--attractions calculated to draw, and

they did; for it was mainly an idle and shiftless negro neighborhood,

with plenty of ragged children and indolent dogs to spare for a point of

interest like that, and keep on sparing them for it, days and days

together.

The new earl found--without surprise--this society item in the evening

paper, and cut it out and scrapbooked it:

By a recent bereavement our esteemed fellow citizen, Colonel

Mulberry Sellers, Perpetual Member-at-large of the Diplomatic Body,

succeeds, as rightful lord, to the great earldom of Rossmore, third

by order of precedence in the earldoms of Great Britain, and will

take early measures, by suit in the House of Lords, to wrest the

title and estates from the present usurping holder of them. Until

the season of mourning is past, the usual Thursday evening

receptions at Rossmore Towers will be discontinued.

Lady Rossmore's comment-to herself:

"Receptions! People who don't rightly know him may think he is

commonplace, but to my mind he is one of the most unusual men I ever saw.

As for suddenness and capacity in imagining things, his beat don't exist,

I reckon. As like as not it wouldn't have occurred to anybody else to

name this poor old rat-trap Rossmore Towers, but it just comes natural to

him. Well, no doubt it's a blessed thing to have an imagination that can

always make you satisfied, no matter how you are fixed. Uncle Dave

Hopkins used to always say, 'Turn me into John Calvin, and I want to know

which place I'm going to; turn me into Mulberry Sellers and I don't

care.'"

The rightful earl's comment-to himself:

"It's a beautiful name, beautiful. Pity I didn't think of it before I

wrote the usurper. But I'll be ready for him when he answers."

CHAPTER V.

No answer to that telegram; no arriving daughter. Yet nobody showed any

uneasiness or seemed surprised; that is, nobody but Washington. After

three days of waiting, he asked Lady Rossmore what she supposed the

trouble was. She answered, tranquilly:

"Oh, it's some notion of hers, you never can tell. She's a Sellers, all

through--at least in some of her ways; and a Sellers can't tell you

beforehand what he's going to do, because he don't know himself till he's

done it. She's all right; no occasion to worry about her. When she's

ready she'll come or she'll write, and you can't tell which, till it's

happened."

It turned out to be a letter. It was handed in at that moment, and was

received by the mother without trembling hands or feverish eagerness,

or any other of the manifestations common in the case of long delayed

answers to imperative telegrams. She polished her glasses with

tranquility and thoroughness, pleasantly gossiping along, the while,

then opened the letter and began to read aloud:

KENILWORTH KEEP, REDGAUNTLET HALL,

ROWENA-IVANHOE COLLEGE, THURSDAY.

DEAR PRECIOUS MAMMA ROSSMORE:

Oh, the joy of it!--you can't think. They had always turned up

their noses at our pretentions, you know; and I had fought back as

well as I could by turning up mine at theirs. They always said it

might be something great and fine to be rightful Shadow of an

earldom, but to merely be shadow of a shadow, and two or three times

removed at that--pooh-pooh! And I always retorted that not to be

able to show four generations of American-Colonial-Dutch Peddler-

and-Salt-Cod-McAllister-Nobility might be endurable, but to have to

confess such an origin--pfew-few! Well, the telegram, it was just a

cyclone! The messenger came right into the great Rob Roy Hall of

Audience, as excited as he could be, singing out, "Dispatch for Lady

Gwendolen Sellers!" and you ought to have seen that simpering

chattering assemblage of pinchbeck aristocrats, turn to stone!

I was off in the corner, of course, by myself--it's where Cinderella

belongs. I took the telegram and read it, and tried to faint--and I

could have done it if I had had any preparation, but it was all so

sudden, you know--but no matter, I did the next best thing: I put my

handkerchief to my eyes and fled sobbing to my room, dropping the

telegram as I started. I released one corner of my eye a moment--

just enough to see the herd swarm for the telegram--and then

continued my broken-hearted flight just as happy as a bird.

Then the visits of condolence began, and I had to accept the loan of

Miss Augusta-Templeton-Ashmore Hamilton's quarters because the press

was so great and there isn't room for three and a cat in mine. And

I've been holding a Lodge of Sorrow ever since and defending myself

against people's attempts to claim kin. And do you know, the very

first girl to fetch her tears and sympathy to my market was that

foolish Skimperton girl who has always snubbed me so shamefully and

claimed lordship and precedence of the whole college because some

ancestor of hers, some time or other, was a McAllister. Why it was

like the bottom bird in the menagerie putting on airs because its

head ancestor was a pterodactyl.

But the ger-reatest triumph of all was--guess. But you'll never.

This is it. That little fool and two others have always been

fussing and fretting over which was entitled to precedence--by rank,

you know. They've nearly starved themselves at it; for each claimed

the right to take precedence of all the college in leaving the

table, and so neither of them ever finished her dinner, but broke

off in the middle and tried to get out ahead of the others. Well,

after my first day's grief and seclusion--I was fixing up a mourning

dress you see--I appeared at the public table again, and then--what

do you think? Those three fluffy goslings sat there contentedly,

and squared up the long famine--lapped and lapped, munched and

munched, ate and ate, till the gravy appeared in their eyes--humbly

waiting for the Lady Gwendolen to take precedence and move out

first, you see!

Oh, yes, I've been having a darling good time. And do you know, not

one of these collegians has had the cruelty to ask me how I came by

my new name. With some, this is due to charity, but with the others

it isn't. They refrain, not from native kindness but from educated

discretion. I educated them.

Well, as soon as I shall have settled up what's left of the old

scores and snuffed up a few more of those pleasantly intoxicating

clouds of incense, I shall pack and depart homeward. Tell papa I

am as fond of him as I am of my new name. I couldn't put it

stronger than that. What an inspiration it was! But inspirations

come easy to him.

These, from your loving daughter,

GWENDOLEN.

Hawkins reached for the letter and glanced over it.

"Good hand," he said, "and full of confidence and animation, and goes

racing right along. She's bright--that's plain."

"Oh, they're all bright--the Sellerses. Anyway, they would be, if there

were any. Even those poor Latherses would have been bright if they had

been Sellerses; I mean full blood. Of course they had a Sellers strain

in them--a big strain of it, too--but being a Bland dollar don't make it

a dollar just the same."

The seventh day after the date of the telegram Washington came dreaming

down to breakfast and was set wide awake by an electrical spasm of

pleasure.

Here was the most beautiful young creature he had ever seen in his life.

It was Sally Sellers Lady Gwendolen; she had come in the night. And it

seemed to him that her clothes were the prettiest and the daintiest he

had ever looked upon, and the most exquisitely contrived and fashioned

and combined, as to decorative trimmings, and fixings, and melting

harmonies of color. It was only a morning dress, and inexpensive, but he

confessed to himself, in the English common to Cherokee Strip, that it

was a "corker." And now, as he perceived, the reason why the Sellers

household poverties and sterilities had been made to blossom like the

rose, and charm the eye and satisfy the spirit, stood explained; here was

the magician; here in the midst of her works, and furnishing in her own

person the proper accent and climaxing finish of the whole.

"My daughter, Major Hawkins--come home to mourn; flown home at the call

of affliction to help the authors of her being bear the burden of

bereavement. She was very fond of the late earl--idolized him, sir,

idolized him--"

"Why, father, I've never seen him."

"True--she's right, I was thinking of another--er--of her mother--"

"I idolized that smoked haddock?--that sentimental, spiritless--"

"I was thinking of myself! Poor noble fellow, we were inseparable com--"

"Hear the man! Mulberry Sel--Mul--Rossmore--hang the troublesome name I

can never--if I've heard you say once, I've heard you say a thousand

times that if that poor sheep--"

"I was thinking of--of--I don't know who I was thinking of, and it

doesn't make any difference anyway; somebody idolized him, I recollect it

as if it were yesterday; and--"

"Father, I am going to shake hands with Major Hawkins, and let the

introduction work along and catch up at its leisure. I remember you very

well in deed, Major Hawkins, although I was a little child when I saw you

last; and I am very, very glad indeed to see you again and have you in

our house as one of us;" and beaming in his face she finished her cordial

shake with the hope that he had not forgotten her.

He was prodigiously pleased by her outspoken heartiness, and wanted to

repay her by assuring her that he remembered her, and not only that but

better even than he remembered his own children, but the facts would not

quite warrant this; still, he stumbled through a tangled sentence which

answered just as well, since the purport of it was an awkward and

unintentional confession that her extraordinary beauty had so stupefied

him that he hadn't got back to his bearings, yet, and therefore couldn't

be certain as to whether he remembered her at all or not. The speech

made him her friend; it couldn't well help it.

In truth the beauty of this fair creature was of a rare type, and may

well excuse a moment of our time spent in its consideration. It did not

consist in the fact that she had eyes, nose, mouth, chin, hair, ears, it

consisted in their arrangement. In true beauty, more depends upon right

location and judicious distribution of feature than upon multiplicity of

them. So also as regards color. The very combination of colors which in

a volcanic irruption would add beauty to a landscape might detach it from

a girl. Such was Gwendolen Sellers.

The family circle being completed by Gwendolen's arrival, it was decreed

that the official mourning should now begin; that it should begin at six

o'clock every evening, (the dinner hour,) and end with the dinner.

"It's a grand old line, major, a sublime old line, and deserves to be

mourned for, almost royally; almost imperially, I may say. Er--Lady

Gwendolen--but she's gone; never mind; I wanted my Peerage; I'll fetch it

myself, presently, and show you a thing or two that will give you a

realizing idea of what our house is. I've been glancing through Burke,

and I find that of William the Conqueror's sixty-four natural ah--

my dear, would you mind getting me that book? It's on the escritoire in

our boudoir. Yes, as I was saying, there's only St. Albans, Buccleugh

and Grafton ahead of us on the list--all the rest of the British nobility

are in procession behind us. Ah, thanks, my lady. Now then, we turn to

William, and we find--letter for XYZ? Oh, splendid--when'd you get it?"

"Last night; but I was asleep before you came, you were out so late; and

when I came to breakfast Miss Gwendolen--well, she knocked everything out

of me, you know--"

"Wonderful girl, wonderful; her great origin is detectable in her step,

her carriage, her features--but what does he say? Come, this is

exciting."

"I haven't read it--er--Rossm--Mr. Rossm--er--"

"M'lord! Just cut it short like that. It's the English way. I'll open

it. Ah, now let's see."

A. TO YOU KNOW WHO. Think I know you. Wait ten days. Coming to

Washington.

The excitement died out of both men's faces. There was a brooding

silence for a while, then the younger one said with a sigh:

"Why, we can't wait ten days for the money."

"No--the man's unreasonable; we are down to the bed rock, financially

speaking."

"If we could explain to him in some way, that we are so situated that

time is of the utmost importance to us--"

"Yes--yes, that's it--and so if it would be as convenient for him to come

at once it would be a great accommodation to us, and one which we--which

we--which we--wh--well, which we should sincerely appreciate--"

"That's it--and most gladly reciprocate--"

"Certainly--that'll fetch him. Worded right, if he's a man--got any of

the feelings of a man, sympathies and all that, he'll be here inside of

twenty-four hours. Pen and paper--come, we'll get right at it."

Between them they framed twenty-two different advertisements, but none

was satisfactory. A main fault in all of them was urgency. That feature

was very troublesome: if made prominent, it was calculated to excite

Pete's suspicion; if modified below the suspicion-point it was flat and

meaningless. Finally the Colonel resigned, and said:

"I have noticed, in such literary experiences as I have had, that one of

the most taking things to do is to conceal your meaning when you are

trying to conceal it. Whereas, if you go at literature with a free

conscience and nothing to conceal, you can turn out a book, every time,

that the very elect can't understand. They all do."

Then Hawkins resigned also, and the two agreed that they must manage to

wait the ten days some how or other. Next, they caught a ray of cheer:

since they had something definite to go upon, now, they could probably

borrow money on the reward--enough, at any rate, to tide them over till

they got it; and meantime the materializing recipe would be perfected,

and then good bye to trouble for good and all.

The next day, May the tenth, a couple of things happened--among others.

The remains of the noble Arkansas twins left our shores for England,

consigned to Lord Rossmore, and Lord Rossmore's son, Kirkcudbright

Llanover Marjoribanks Sellers Viscount Berkeley, sailed from Liverpool

for America to place the reversion of the earldom in the hands of the

rightful peer, Mulberry Sellers, of Rossmore Towers in the District of

Columbia, U. S. A.

These two impressive shipments would meet and part in mid-Atlantic, five

days later, and give no sign.

CHAPTER VI.

In the course of time the twins arrived and were delivered to their great

kinsman. To try to describe the rage of that old man would profit

nothing, the attempt would fall so far short of the purpose. However

when he had worn himself out and got quiet again, he looked the matter

over and decided that the twins had some moral rights, although they had

no legal ones; they were of his blood, and it could not be decorous to

treat them as common clay. So he laid them with their majestic kin in

the Cholmondeley church, with imposing state and ceremony, and added the

supreme touch by officiating as chief mourner himself. But he drew the

line at hatchments.

Our friends in Washington watched the weary days go by, while they waited

for Pete and covered his name with reproaches because of his calamitous

procrastinations. Meantime, Sally Sellers, who was as practical and

democratic as the Lady Gwendolen Sellers was romantic and aristocratic,

was leading a life of intense interest and activity and getting the most

she could out of her double personality. All day long in the privacy of

her work-room, Sally Sellers earned bread for the Sellers family; and all

the evening Lady Gwendolen Sellers supported the Rossmore dignity. All

day she was American, practically, and proud of the work of her head and

hands and its commercial result; all the evening she took holiday and

dwelt in a rich shadow-land peopled with titled and coroneted fictions.

By day, to her, the place was a plain, unaffected, ramshackle old trap

just that, and nothing more; by night it was Rossmore Towers. At college

she had learned a trade without knowing it. The girls had found out that

she was the designer of her own gowns. She had no idle moments after

that, and wanted none; for the exercise of an extraordinary gift is the

supremest pleasure in life, and it was manifest that Sally Sellers

possessed a gift of that sort in the matter of costume-designing. Within

three days after reaching home she had hunted up some work; before Pete

was yet due in Washington, and before the twins were fairly asleep in

English soil, she was already nearly swamped with work, and the

sacrificing of the family chromos for debt had got an effective check.

"She's a brick," said Rossmore to the Major; "just her father all over:

prompt to labor with head or hands, and not ashamed of it; capable,

always capable, let the enterprise be what it may; successful by nature--

don't know what defeat is; thus, intensely and practically American by

inhaled nationalism, and at the same time intensely and aristocratically

European by inherited nobility of blood. Just me, exactly: Mulberry

Sellers in matter of finance and invention; after office hours, what do

you find? The same clothes, yes, but what's in them? Rossmore of the

peerage."

The two friends had haunted the general post-office daily. At last they

had their reward. Toward evening the 20th of May, they got a letter for

XYZ. It bore the Washington postmark; the note itself was not dated. It

said:

"Ash barrel back of lamp post Black horse Alley. If you are playing

square go and set on it to-morrow morning 21st 10.22 not sooner not

later wait till I come."

The friends cogitated over the note profoundly. Presently the earl said:

"Don't you reckon he's afraid we are a sheriff with a requisition?"

"Why, m'lord?"

"Because that's no place for a seance. Nothing friendly, nothing

sociable about it. And at the same time, a body that wanted to know who

was roosting on that ash-barrel without exposing himself by going near

it, or seeming to be interested in it, could just stand on the street

corner and take a glance down the alley and satisfy himself, don't you

see?"

"Yes, his idea is plain, now. He seems to be a man that can't be candid

and straightforward. He acts as if he thought we--shucks, I wish he had

come out like a man and told us what hotel he--"

"Now you've struck it! you've struck it sure, Washington; he has told

us."

"Has he?"

"Yes, he has; but he didn't mean to. That alley is a lonesome little

pocket that runs along one side of the New Gadsby. That's his hotel."

"What makes' you think that?"

"Why, I just know it. He's got a room that's just across from that lamp

post. He's going to sit there perfectly comfortable behind his shutters

at 10.22 to-morrow, and when he sees us sitting on the ash-barrel, he'll

say to himself, 'I saw one of those fellows on the train'--and then he'll

pack his satchel in half a minute and ship for the ends of the earth."

Hawkins turned sick with disappointment:

"Oh, dear, it's all up, Colonel--it's exactly what he'll do."

"Indeed he won't!"

"Won't he? Why?"

"Because you won't be holding the ash barrel down, it'll be me. You'll

be coming in with an officer and a requisition in plain clothes--the

officer, I mean--the minute you see him arrive and open up a talk with

me."

"Well, what a head you have got, Colonel Sellers! I never should have

thought of that in the world."

"Neither would any earl of Rossmore, betwixt William's contribution and

Mulberry--as earl; but it's office hours, now, you see, and the earl in

me sleeps. Come--I'll show you his very room."

They reached the neighborhood of the New Gadsby about nine in the

evening, and passed down the alley to the lamp post.

"There you are," said the colonel, triumphantly, with a wave of his hand

which took in the whole side of the hotel. "There it is--what did I tell

you?"

"Well, but--why, Colonel, it's six stories high. I don't quite make out

which window you--"

"All the windows, all of them. Let him have his choice--I'm indifferent,

now that I have located him. You go and stand on the corner and wait;

I'll prospect the hotel."

The earl drifted here and there through the swarming lobby, and finally

took a waiting position in the neighborhood of the elevator. During an

hour crowds went up and crowds came down; and all complete as to limbs;

but at last the watcher got a glimpse of a figure that was satisfactory--

got a glimpse of the back of it, though he had missed his chance at the

face through waning alertness. The glimpse revealed a cowboy hat, and

below it a plaided sack of rather loud pattern, and an empty sleeve

pinned up to the shoulder. Then the elevator snatched the vision aloft

and the watcher fled away in joyful excitement, and rejoined the

fellow-conspirator.

"We've got him, Major--got him sure! I've seen him--seen him good; and I

don't care where or when that man approaches me backwards, I'll recognize

him every time. We're all right. Now for the requisition."

They got it, after the delays usual in such cases. By half past eleven

they were at home and happy, and went to bed full of dreams of the

morrow's great promise.

Among the elevator load which had the suspect for fellow-passenger was a

young kinsman of Mulberry Sellers, but Mulberry was not aware of it and

didn't see him. It was Viscount Berkeley.

CHAPTER VII.

Arrived in his room Lord Berkeley made preparations for that first and

last and all-the-time duty of the visiting Englishman--the jotting down

in his diary of his "impressions" to date. His preparations consisted in

ransacking his "box" for a pen. There was a plenty of steel pens on his

table with the ink bottle, but he was English. The English people

manufacture steel pens for nineteen-twentieths of the globe, but they

never use any themselves. They use exclusively the pre-historic quill.

My lord not only found a quill pen, but the best one he had seen in

several years--and after writing diligently for some time, closed with

the following entry:

BUT IN ONE THING I HAVE MADE AN IMMENSE MISTAKE, I OUGHT TO

HAVE SHUCKED MY TITLE AND CHANGED MY NAME BEFORE I STARTED.

He sat admiring that pen a while, and then went on:

"All attempts to mingle with the common people and became permanently one

of them are going to fail, unless I can get rid of it, disappear from it,

and re-appear with the solid protection of a new name. I am astonished

and pained to see how eager the most of these Americans are to get

acquainted with a lord, and how diligent they are in pushing attentions

upon him. They lack English servility, it is true--but they could

acquire it, with practice. My quality travels ahead of me in the most

mysterious way. I write my family name without additions, on the

register of this hotel, and imagine that I am going to pass for an

obscure and unknown wanderer, but the clerk promptly calls out, 'Front!

show his lordship to four-eighty-two!' and before I can get to the lift

there is a reporter trying to interview me as they call it. This sort of

thing shall cease at once. I will hunt up the American Claimant the

first thing in the morning, accomplish my mission, then change my lodging

and vanish from scrutiny under a fictitious name."

He left his diary on the table, where it would be handy in case any new

"impressions" should wake him up in the night, then he went to bed and

presently fell asleep. An hour or two passed, and then he came slowly to

consciousness with a confusion of mysterious and augmenting sounds

hammering at the gates of his brain for admission; the next moment he was

sharply awake, and those sounds burst with the rush and roar and boom of

an undammed freshet into his ears. Banging and slamming of shutters;

smashing of windows and the ringing clash of falling glass; clatter of

flying feet along the halls; shrieks, supplications, dumb moanings of

despair, within, hoarse shouts of command outside; cracklings and

mappings, and the windy roar of victorious flames!

Bang, bang, bang! on the door, and a cry:

"Turn out--the house is on fire!"

The cry passed on, and the banging. Lord Berkeley sprang out of bed and

moved with all possible speed toward the clothes-press in the darkness

and the gathering smoke, but fell over a chair and lost his bearings.

He groped desperately about on his hands, and presently struck his head

against the table and was deeply grateful, for it gave him his bearings

again, since it stood close by the door. He seized his most precious

possession; his journaled Impressions of America, and darted from the

room.

He ran down the deserted hall toward the red lamp which he knew indicated

the place of a fire-escape. The door of the room beside it was open.

In the room the gas was burning full head; on a chair was a pile of

clothing. He ran to the window, could not get it up, but smashed it with

a chair, and stepped out on the landing of the fire-escape; below him was

a crowd of men, with a sprinkling of women and youth, massed in a ruddy

light. Must he go down in his spectral night dress? No--this side of

the house was not yet on fire except at the further end; he would snatch

on those clothes. Which he did. They fitted well enough, though a

trifle loosely, and they were just a shade loud as to pattern. Also as

to hat--which was of a new breed to him, Buffalo Bill not having been to

England yet. One side of the coat went on, but the other side refused;

one of its sleeves was turned up and stitched to the shoulder. He

started down without waiting to get it loose, made the trip successfully,

and was promptly hustled outside the limit-rope by the police.

The cowboy hat and the coat but half on made him too much of a centre of

attraction for comfort, although nothing could be more profoundly

respectful, not to say deferential, than was the manner of the crowd

toward him. In his mind he framed a discouraged remark for early entry

in his diary: "It is of no use; they know a lord through any disguise,

and show awe of him--even something very like fear, indeed."

Presently one of the gaping and adoring half-circle of boys ventured a

timid question. My lord answered it. The boys glanced wonderingly at

each other and from somewhere fell the comment:

"English cowboy! Well, if that ain't curious."

Another mental note to be preserved for the diary: "Cowboy. Now what

might a cowboy be? Perhaps--" But the viscount perceived that some more

questions were about to be asked; so he worked his way out of the crowd,

released the sleeve, put on the coat and wandered away to seek a humble

and obscure lodging. He found it and went to bed and was soon asleep.

In the morning, he examined his clothes. They were rather assertive, it

seemed to him, but they were new and clean, at any rate. There was

considerable property in the pockets. Item, five one-hundred dollar

bills. Item, near fifty dollars in small bills and silver. Plug of

tobacco. Hymn-book, which refuses to open; found to contain whiskey.

Memorandum book bearing no name. Scattering entries in it, recording in

a sprawling, ignorant hand, appointments, bets, horse-trades, and so on,

with people of strange, hyphenated name--Six-Fingered Jake, Young-Man-

afraid-of his-Shadow, and the like. No letters, no documents.

The young man muses--maps out his course. His letter of credit is burned;

he will borrow the small bills and the silver in these pockets, apply

part of it to advertising for the owner, and use the rest for sustenance

while he seeks work. He sends out for the morning paper, next, and

proceeds to read about the fire. The biggest line in the display-head

announces his own death! The body of the account furnishes all the

particulars; and tells how, with the inherited heroism of his caste, he

went on saving women and children until escape for himself was

impossible; then with the eyes of weeping multitudes upon him, he stood

with folded arms and sternly awaited the approach of the devouring fiend;

"and so standing, amid a tossing sea of flame and on-rushing billows of

smoke, the noble young heir of the great house of Rossmore was caught up

in a whirlwind of fiery glory, and disappeared forever from the vision of

men."

The thing was so fine and generous and knightly that it brought the

moisture to his eyes. Presently he said to himself: "What to do is as

plain as day, now. My Lord Berkeley is dead--let him stay so. Died

creditably, too; that will make the calamity the easier for my father.

And I don't have to report to the American Claimant, now. Yes, nothing

could be better than the way matters have turned out. I have only to

furnish myself with a new name, and take my new start in life totally

untrammeled. Now I breathe my first breath of real freedom; and how

fresh and breezy and inspiring it is! At last I am a man! a man on equal

terms with my neighbor; and by my manhood; and by it alone, I shall rise

and be seen of the world, or I shall sink from sight and deserve it.

This is the gladdest day, and the proudest, that ever poured it's sun

upon my head!"

CHAPTER VIII.

"GOD bless my soul, Hawkins!"

The morning paper dropped from the Colonel's nerveless-grasp.

"What is it?"

"He's gone!--the bright, the young, the gifted, the noblest of his

illustrious race--gone! gone up in flames and unimaginable glory!"

"Who?"

"My precious, precious young kinsman--Kirkcudbright Llanover Marjoribanks

Sellers Viscount Berkeley, son and heir of usurping Rossmore."

"No!"

"It's true--too true."

"When?"

"Last night."

"Where?"

"Right here in Washington; where he arrived from England last night, the

papers say."

"You don't say!"

"Hotel burned down."

"What hotel?"

"The New Gadsby!"

"Oh, my goodness! And have we lost both of them?"

"Both who?"

"One-Arm Pete."

"Oh, great guns, I forgot all about him. Oh, I hope not."

"Hope! Well, I should say! Oh, we can't spare him! We can better

afford to lose a million viscounts than our only support and stay."

They searched the paper diligently, and were appalled to find that a

one-armed man had been seen flying along one of the halls of the hotel

in his underclothing and apparently out of his head with fright, and as

he would listen to no one and persisted in making for a stairway which

would carry him to certain death, his case was given over as a hopeless

one.

"Poor fellow," sighed Hawkins; "and he had friends so near. I wish we

hadn't come away from there--maybe we could have saved him."

The earl looked up and said calmly:

"His being dead doesn't matter. He was uncertain before. We've got him

sure, this time."

"Got him? How?"

"I will materialize him."

"Rossmore, don't--don't trifle with me. Do you mean that? Can you do

it?"

"I can do it, just as sure as you are sitting there. And I will."

"Give me your hand, and let me have the comfort of shaking it. I was

perishing, and you have put new life into me. Get at it, oh, get at it

right away."

"It will take a little time, Hawkins, but there's no hurry, none in the

world--in the circumstances. And of course certain duties have devolved

upon me now, which necessarily claim my first attention. This poor young

nobleman--"

"Why, yes, I am sorry for my heartlessness, and you smitten with this new

family affliction. Of course you must materialize him first--I quite

understand that."

"I--I--well, I wasn't meaning just that, but,--why, what am I thinking

of! Of course I must materialize him. Oh, Hawkins, selfishness is the

bottom trait in human nature; I was only thinking that now, with the

usurper's heir out of the way. But you'll forgive that momentary weakness,

and forget it. Don't ever remember it against me that Mulberry Sellers

was once mean enough to think the thought that I was thinking. I'll

materialise him--I will, on my honor--and I'd do it were he a thousand

heirs jammed into one and stretching in a solid rank from here to the

stolen estates of Rossmore, and barring the road forever to the rightful

earl!

"There spoke the real Sellers--the other had a false ring, old friend."

"Hawkins, my boy, it just occurs to me--a thing I keep forgetting to

mention--a matter that we've got to be mighty careful about."

"What is that?"

"We must keep absolutely still about these materializations. Mind, not a

hint of them must escape--not a hint. To say nothing of how my wife and

daughter--high-strung, sensitive organizations--might feel about them,

the negroes wouldn't stay on the place a minute."

"That's true, they wouldn't. It's well you spoke, for I'm not naturally

discreet with my tongue when I'm not warned."

Sellers reached out and touched a bell-button in the wall; set his eye

upon the rear door and waited; touched it again and waited; and just as

Hawkins was remarking admiringly that the Colonel was the most

progressive and most alert man he had ever seen, in the matter of

impressing into his service every modern convenience the moment it was

invented, and always keeping breast to breast with the drum major in the

great work of material civilization, he forsook the button (which hadn't

any wire attached to it,) rang a vast dinner bell which stood on the

table, and remarked that he had tried that new-fangled dry battery, now,

to his entire satisfaction, and had got enough of it; and added:

"Nothing would do Graham Bell but I must try it; said the mere fact of my

trying it would secure public confidence, and get it a chance to show

what it could do. I told him that in theory a dry battery was just a

curled darling and no mistake, but when it come to practice, sho!--and

here's the result. Was I right? What should you say, Washington

Hawkins? You've seen me try that button twice. Was I right?--that's the

idea. Did I know what I was talking about, or didn't I?"

"Well, you know how I feel about you, Colonel Sellers, and always have

felt. It seems to me that you always know everything about everything.

If that man had known you as I know you he would have taken your judgment

at the start, and dropped his dry battery where it was."

"Did you ring, Marse Sellers?"

"No, Marse Sellers didn't."

"Den it was you, Marse Washington. I's heah, suh."

"No, it wasn't Marse Washington, either."

"De good lan'! who did ring her, den?"

"Lord Rossmore rang it!"

The old negro flung up his hands and exclaimed:

"Blame my skin if I hain't gone en forgit dat name agin! Come heah,

Jinny--run heah, honey."

Jinny arrived.

"You take dish-yer order de lord gwine to give you I's gwine down suller

and study dat name tell I git it."

"I take de order! Who's yo' nigger las' year? De bell rung for you."

"Dat don't make no diffunce. When a bell ring for anybody, en old

marster tell me to--"

"Clear out, and settle it in the kitchen!"

The noise of the quarreling presently sank to a murmur in the distance,

and the earl added: "That's a trouble with old house servants that were

your slaves once and have been your personal friends always."

"Yes, and members of the family."

"Members of the family is just what they become--THE members of the

family, in fact. And sometimes master and mistress of the household.

These two are mighty good and loving and faithful and honest, but hang

it, they do just about as they please, they chip into a conversation

whenever they want to, and the plain fact is, they ought to be killed."

It was a random remark, but it gave him an idea--however, nothing could

happen without that result.

"What I wanted, Hawkins, was to send for the family and break the news to

them."

"O, never mind bothering with the servants, then. I will go and bring

them down."

While he was gone, the earl worked his idea.

"Yes," he said to himself, "when I've got the materializing down to a

certainty, I will get Hawkins to kill them, and after that they will be

under better control. Without doubt a materialized negro could easily be

hypnotized into a state resembling silence. And this could be made

permanent--yes, and also modifiable, at will--sometimes very silent,

sometimes turn on more talk, more action, more emotion, according to what

you want. It's a prime good idea. Make it adjustable--with a screw or

something."

The two ladies entered, now, with Hawkins, and the two negroes followed,

uninvited, and fell to brushing and dusting around, for they perceived

that there was matter of interest to the fore, and were willing to find

out what it was.