"The President, señor? There behind the white panthers." With the stock of his rawhide whip, the fellow pointed to an iron gate, set between posts of red brick, topped with marble panthers. Each panther held a shield between its front paws. Hemming threw the bullock-driver a coin, and rode on the pavement, the better to examine the armorial design on the shields. He laughed softly. "Familiar," he said, "ah, yes, a good enough old Devonshire shield. I have admired it in the dining-room of the Governor of Newfoundland. Now I doff my hat to it at the entrance of a president's residence. Dash it all, I have outgrown dismay, and a jolly good thing, too." He flecked a leaf off his knee with the tip of his glove. "Queer I never heard about this before,--and what the deuce is a Brazilian doing with those arms? Can this be where that crazy American whom old Farrington told me about hangs out?" His brow cleared, and he bowed to the expressionless panthers. A sentry, who had been standing a few paces off, with a cavalry sabre at his shoulder and a cigarette in his mouth, now drew near and saluted. Hemming returned the salute sharply. This same custom of smoking on sentry-go had jarred on him many a time in Pernambuco. He had noticed the same thing in Bahia. "I would see the President," he said, and passed his card to the soldier. From a small guard-house just inside the wall came several more white-clad men. One of these hurried away with Hemming's card, and presently returned. The gates were swung wide open; Hemming rode in at a dress-parade trot, travel-stained, straight of back, his monocle flashing in his eye. Soldiers posted here and there among the palms and roses and trim flower-beds stood at attention as he passed. He drew rein and dismounted at the foot of the marble steps. A tall, heavily built man, dressed in a black frock coat and white trousers, came down to meet him. A man in livery took his horse. "Mr. Hemming," said the large man, "I am the President." He popped a fat, yellow cigar into his mouth, and shook hands. "Come in," he said. He led the way into a large tiled room, containing a billiard-table of the American kind, a roll-top desk, and an office chair. The windows of the room were all on one side, and opened on a corner of the gardens, in which a fountain tossed merrily. The President sank into a chair in the easiest manner, and threw one leg over the arm of it. Then he noticed, with a quick twinkle in his blue eyes, Hemming in the middle of the floor, erect and unsmiling. "Mr. Hemming," he said, "I want your respect, but none of that stiff-backed ceremony between gentlemen. I am neither Roosevelt nor Albert Edward. Even Morgan is a bigger man than I am, though I still hope. You have been in the English army, and you like to have things starched; well, so do I sometimes. Please fall into that chair."