Habit won. He did not even hesitate, and I held my cigarette, Mexican fashion, for him to take a light. Once committed in that fashion, he was too proud to show the white feather, and he and I smoked our cigarettes out while the bullets flew. It was the longest cigarette, I think, I ever smoked, but it turned the trick. We held on to that trench till darkness put an end to the fire. After the capture of Zacatecas I went to the staff of Gen. Raul Madero, with the rank of Major. The invitation had been extended several times before. Now that Trinidad was dead, there was nothing to hold me back, and I very gladly joined the official family of the brother of the murdered President. Since my first association with him, before Ojinaga, he had impressed me as the ablest man I had seen south of the Rio Grande. The closer and constant contact entailed by my becoming a member of his staff confirmed that feeling. Raul Madero has clarity of intelligence, an encyclopaedic grasp of Mexican affairs, social, religious, political and financial, and a winning personality that masks abundant energy and determination. I was associated with him for only six weeks. On June 28th, 1914, you remember, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated. All through July the Austrian Government was formulating its demands on Serbia, which culminated in the ultimatum of July 23. Long before that I had formed my opinion as to which way the wind was to blow. And I had a sufficiently conceited notion of my usefulness as a trained and experienced agent to believe that when the general European disturbance should break out my days as a soldier of fortune in Mexico would be ended. Toward the end of July a stranger brought me credentials proving him a messenger from Consul Kueck in El Paso. “The Consul,” he told me, “wishes to ask you one question, and the answer is a yes or a no. This is the question: In case your Government wished your services again, could she expect to receive them?” “In case of war—yes,” I answered. It was not very long before I received a telegram from Kueck. “Come,” was all it said. CHAPTER VII. _War. I re-enter the German service and am appointed aide to Captain von Papen. The German conception of neutrality and how to make use of it. The plot against the Welland Canal._ The meaning of Kueck’s telegram was plain. War had come at last, the war that we had expected and prepared for during so many years. My country was at war and I must leave whatever I was doing and return to its service. I went to Raul Madero with the telegram. “It has come,” I said. “War. I shall have to go.”