The chafing-dish was the hump and the hoof of his festivities. He made rarebits and deviled things with an air that had been handed down from generations of epicures. I can see him now with his black hair in a waving lock on his forehead, in worn slippers and faded corduroy coat, sitting on the edge of the table smoking a long pipe, visualizing himself as the lord of a castle--the rest of us as vassals of a rather agreeable and intelligent sort! It was perfectly natural that he should stage his first love-affair, and when he was jilted that he should dramatize his despair. For days after Madge Ballou had declared her preference for Dicky Carson, Randolph walked with melancholy. He came to my rooms and sat, a very young and handsome Hamlet, on my fire-bench, with his chin in his hand. "Why should she like Dicky best?" "She has no imagination." "But Dicky's a--beast--" "With a fat bank-account." "Money wouldn't count with Madge." "I'm not so sure--" "Women are not like that, MacDonald." I saw, as he went on with his arguments, that she had become to him an Ophelia, weakly led. Women in his lexicon of romance might be weak but never mercenary. I think he finally overthrew her in his mind with "_Get thee to a nunnery!_" I know that he burned her picture; he showed me the ashes in a silver stamp-box. He had, of course, his heroes--there were moments when unconsciously he aped them. It was after a debate that the boys began to call him "Bonaparte." He had defended the Little Corporal, and in defending him had personified him. With that dark lock over his forehead, his arms folded, he had flung defiance to the deputies, and for that moment he had been not Tom Randolph but the Emperor himself. He won the debate, amid much acclaim, and when he came down to us I will confess to a feeling, which I think the others shared, of a soul within his body which did not belong there. Tom Randolph was, of course, Tom Randolph, but the voice which had spoken to us had rung with the power of that other voice which had been stilled at St. Helena! The days that followed dispelled the illusion, but the name clung to him. I think he liked it, and emphasized the resemblance. He let his hair grow long, sunk his head between his shoulders, was quick and imperious in his speech. Then came the war. Belgium devastated, France invaded. Randolph was fired at once. "I'm going over." "But, my dear fellow--" "There's our debt to Lafayette." With his mind made up there was no moving him. The rest of us held back. Our imaginations did not grasp at once the world's need of us. But Randolph saw himself a Henry of Navarre--_white plumes_; a Richard of the Lion Heart--_crusades and red crosses_; a Cyrano without the nose--"_These be cadets of Gascony_--" "You see, MacDonald," he said, flaming, "we Randolphs have always done it." "Done what?" "Fought. There's been a Randolph in every war over here, and before that in a long line of battles--"