"Beg pardon, this ridiculous Independence Day racket has cost me my morning's nap; but I ought not to be in a rage I suppose. I fancy you have not enjoyed it either, Miss Cornwallis, although it is one of your country's choicest exports." Ruth began to show signs of nervous distress and Mr. Cornwallis hastened to explain as well as place and time permitted, their attitude on the subject and the sad experience that made them fugitives from home. He closed with a significant look at Ruth, which would have been sufficient for a more impressionable man--a civilian rather than a soldier. Not so, however, with Colonel Jordan. He thought it was the mother's health that had been effected by the loss of her son, as very naturally it would be. There was nothing in that which appealed especially to his sympathies. Besides, his sympathies were tough. He turned to Ruth as though he had discovered a good joke. "Beg pardon, Miss Cornwallis; but it would appear from latest advices that the American victory over England is being turned into a most ridiculous defeat. If the Mother Country had only known her wayward children's fondness for the firecracker and toy pistol all that she would have needed to have done when they turned against her, would have been to have furnished them with a generous supply of those dastardly things and they would have destroyed themselves." "The London Pyrotechnist is shrewd enough to take advantage of the situation," laughed Admiral Larkins. "He has surrounded the country with his manufacturing tents and is said to have sold $10,000,000 worth of Independence Day fireworks to Americans to celebrate their victory over the English, last year--American casualties for that day footed up to about 3,500 in killed and wounded. It's a good scheme from a financial point of view." [Illustration: THE FUNNY FOURTH RACKET ON ENGLISH SOIL.] Another Englishman who had still less understanding of the Cornwallis matter, but was aware of the annual higeria of Americans to foreign lands to escape the noise and danger of their national day, remarked: "It's a providential thing though for the Americans of today that their forebears did not push their victorious hordes up to the north pole, else they would have no near-by place to fly to, while their own country is being made too hot for them." How long this conversation would have continued it is difficult to say had it not been for the distressful barking of Colonel Jordon's English terrier, who rushed in with a long string of firecrackers tied to his tail.