He would have said more, but the story-teller lifted a finger to intimate that the bayonet was not the main point--there was better laughing ahead. "Handsome little chap he was--brave eyes--sweet mouth. Thinks I right there, 'This's going to be somebody some day.' He reminded me of my own son at home. Well, he clum up behind my saddle and rode with me to the edge of Suez, where we met his father with a team of mules and a wagon of provisions. Talk about the Old South, I'll say this: I _never_ see so fine a gentlemen look so _techingly_ poor. Hold up, let me--now, let me--just wait till I tell you. That little rat--if it hadn't been for that little barefooted rat with his scalp-lock a-stickin' up through a tear in his hat, most likely you'd never so much as heard--of Suez! For that little chap was John March!" The speaker clapped his hands upon his knees, opened his mouth, and waited for his hearer's laughter and wonder; but the hearer merely smiled, and with a queer look of frolic in the depths of his handsome eyes, asked, "How lately were you in Suez?" "Me? O--not since '65; but my son's a commercial tourist--rattling smart fellow--you've probably met him--I never see anybody that hadn't--last year he was in New England--this year he's tryin' Dixie. He sells this celebrated 'Hoptonica' for the great Cincinnati house of Pretzels & Bier. Funny thing--he's been mistaken for John March. A young lady--Southern girl--up in New England about a year ago--it was just for an instant--O of course--Must you go? Well, look here! Try to stop over a day in Suez--That's right; it'll pay you!" The two travelers parted. The Union veteran went on westward, while the other--March by name--John March--was ticketed, of course, for Suez. Some ten days before, in London, having just ended a four weeks' circuit through a region of the Continent where news of Suez was even scarcer than emigrants for Widewood, he had, to his astonishment, met Proudfit. The colonel had just arrived across. He was tipsy, as usual, and a sad wreck, but bound for Carlsbad, bright in the faith that when he had stayed there two months he would go home cured for life of his "only bad habit." March was troubled, and did not become less so when Proudfit explained that his presence was due to the "kind pressu' of Garnet and othe's." He knew that Garnet, months before, had swapped his Land Company stock to Proudfit for the Colonel's much better stock in the Construction Company and succeeded him as president of the latter concern. "As a matteh of fawm--tempora'ily--du'ing my ill health," said the Carlsbad pilgrim, adding, in an unfragrant stage-whisper, that there was a secret off-setting sale of both stocks back again, the papers of which were in Mrs. Proudfit's custody. Mrs. Proudfit was not with her husband; she was at home, in Blackland.