"That was a brave thing to do." "Not at all. I was a soldier under orders of the commander of the post. I dared not disobey." She would not have it so. "But you knew that you were going into danger?" "To be honest about it, I did; but I relied on my blue coat to protect me." "It was a terrible time. I was only a child, but I can remember how wild the men all seemed when you drove up and leaped out of the wagon. I didn't realize that my father's life depended on your coming, but we all knew it was brave of you." "I think I was born a soldier. What I like about my present job is its definiteness. I have my written instructions, and there's no need to argue anything. I carry out my orders. But I beg pardon, I'm not going to talk 'shop' to you. I want you to tell me about yourself. I hope you are not to return to the East, for if you do not I shall be able to see you occasionally." Here Redfield appealed to the ranger. "Ross, you're all sorts of a reactionary. What do you say to this? Senator Bridges is opposed to all Federal interference with State forests and State game." The forester's eyes lit up. "But are they State forests and State game? What makes them so? They are lands which the whole people purchased and which the whole people defended." "Heah! heah!" cheered Enderby. Bridges bristled with anger, and went off into a long harangue on States rights and the dangers of centralization, to which Enderby replied: "Bosh! the whole trouble with your bally Government is its lack of cohesion. If I had my way, I'd wipe out the Senate and put a strong man like Roosevelt at the head of the executive. You're such blooming asses over here; you don't know enough to keep a really big man in your presidential chair. This fussing about every four years to put in some oily corporation lawyer is bloody rot. Here's Roosevelt gets in the midst of a lot of the finest kind of reforms, y' know, and directly you go and turn him out! Then if you get a bad man, you've to wait four years till you can fetch him a whack. Why not arrange it so you can pitch your President out the minute he goes wrong? I say your old rag of a Constitution is a ball-and-chain on your national leg. England is immeasurably better off so far as that goes." Ross turned to Virginia, leaving the political discussion to go on over his head. "I was back in the Old Island a couple of years ago, and you've no idea how small it seemed to me. It surely is a 'right little, tight little island.' I couldn't help wondering whether the men in Parliament were as important as they seemed to think they were, and whether England is not really an empty shell of empire, a memory of what it once was. I couldn't settle down there, someway. I was homesick for the mountains in a month. But what scared me most was the pauper population of the old place--one in every thirty-seven must be helped. I came back to the States gladly. 'I guess I'm an American,' I said to my sisters."