“Who are you addressin’?” answered a pale-faced young man—who was passing—from under a broad, stiff-brimmed hat, the crown of which was encircled with the skin of a huge rattlesnake. “I reckon you want your nose set back about an inch anyhow, and I’m the man that can perform that little blacksmithin’ job right here.” The baron glanced at the gray-clad figure, with its gleaming silk ’kerchief knotted carelessly, and arms akimbo, then down at the high boots with their fair-leather tops, behind which gleamed the ebony and silver handle of a bowie knife, and then, meeting the steady, mild blue eyes of the Arizona cowboy, said apologetically:— “Beg pardon. I thought it was the madam. She just left the compartment.” “You did, did you?” said the youth. “That’s what I allowed, en that’s why I tuk an interest in ye. Look a yer. That woman ain’t no slouch, and Gila monsters like you ain’t popular nohow, yearabouts, so you jest keep a civil tongue in your mutton head, an’ it’ll be all right.” And with the movement of a leopard, he glided quietly away, while the baron, after softly closing the door, sank into the nearest sofa, and awaited the return of his wife. “Benson,” shouted the keen-eyed brakeman. “Change cars for Tombstone, Nogales, Hermosillo, Guaymas, and all points on the Gulf of California. Passengers for Tucson, Phoenix, Yuma, San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco remain in the car.” The baron’s party consisted of the baroness and her maid, Professor and Mrs. Thornton, Doctor Eustace, who had accompanied the Von Eulaws from Europe, and Miss Winters, an old friend of the baroness and a graduate of a woman’s law school, who had left a thriving practice in Denver rather than sacrifice her life in the pursuit of a profession for which no woman is really fitted either mentally or physically. The party was _en route_ to Coronado Beach—the baron as one of a score of representatives selected by the emperor of Germany to attend the “dynamic exposition,” as it was generally designated. Six weeks or less before the Prime Minister of every recognized civilized power had received a letter couched in the following phrase. OFFICES OF DAVID MORNING, } 39 Broadway, N.Y., January 1, 1896. } To ................ I respectfully invite your government to appoint so many representatives, not exceeding twenty in number, as it may desire, to be present in San Diego, California, during the first week of April _proximo_, to observe and report upon experiments which will then be made in aerial and submarine navigation, and use of the new explosive “potentite.” It is my hope to demonstrate that hereafter international differences should be submitted for adjustment to a Congress or Court of Nations, and that land and naval warfare—as at present conducted—must come to an end.