XXV. The Three Comrades 218 XXVI. The Iron Chess-Game 226 XXVII. A Stern Chase 237 XXVIII. Check and Countercheck 248 XXIX. The End of the Fight 260 XXX. Battle Jimmie, Courier 266 XXXI. Jimmie and the Generals 273 XXXII. Love 283 XXXIII. War! 290 XXXIV. The Man at Washington 297 “DAD” CHAPTER I THE INTERRUPTION Across the plaza, under the white sun-glare, marched and countermarched the crack regiment’s bronzed men in their heavy high caps and the rest of the odd regimentals of the late Forties. From walls and roofs hung a myriad of more or less soiled American flags. On the plaza band stand a group of Mexican musicians were wrestling with “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.” This last feature of the celebration was a bit of tragic irony attributed to no less a humorist than the arch-victor, the hero of the day--Major-General Winfield Scott. The native musicians were in no wise loath, on patriotic grounds, to play “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.” They were professional performers. One tune meant as much, and as little, to them as another. They had not the faintest notion that they were playing a national air of their nation’s conquerors. The pained looks on their simian little faces and the sad havoc they wrought upon a noble melody were due solely to the fact that the tune was new to them, unlike anything they had ever before heard; and that they had had insufficient time to rehearse it. But the effect was there. At the first halting notes, a grin of wondering delight twisted the faces of the marching regiment. The episode appealed to their Yankee humor. The grin was reflected on the visages of the crowd of officers and civilians who filled the dais at the plaza’s northern end. The onlooking Mexicans--from peon to hidalgo--who fringed the square’s edges, listened in stark apathy. Most of them were ignorant of the air’s import. To them it was but a gringo melody; far inferior to “La Paloma.” The few who recognized it showed no resentment. To their Spanish-Indian minds it was but natural that the victors should thus crow. They themselves were beaten; hopelessly beaten. They and their country. They were glad enough to get off as easily as they seemed like to. A little vaunting--the playing of their new masters’ national song--was nothing to what they would have done had the conditions been reversed.