“‘That’s about the size of it,’ I says, ‘if an Englishman and an American could ever understand each other.’ “‘But, in Heaven’s Holy Name, why?’ he says, sitting down of a heap on an anthill. “‘Well, Cap,’ I says, ‘I don’t pretend to follow your ways of thought, and I can’t see why you abuse your position to persecute a poor prisoner o’ war on _his!_’ “‘My dear fellow,’ he began, throwing up his hands and blushing, ‘I’ll apologise.’ “‘But if you insist,’ I says, ‘there are just one and a half things in this world I can’t do. The odd half don’t matter here; but taking parole, and going home, and being interviewed by the boys, and giving lectures on my single-handed campaign against the hereditary enemies of my beloved country happens to be the one. We’ll let it go at that, Cap.’ “‘But it’ll bore you to death,’ he says. The British are a heap more afraid of what they call being bored than of dying, I’ve noticed. “‘I’ll survive,’ I says, ‘I ain’t British. I can think,’ I says. “‘By God,’ he says, coming up to me, and extending the right hand of fellowship, ‘you ought to be English, Zigler!’ “It’s no good getting mad at a compliment like that. The English all do it. They’re a crazy breed. When they don’t know you they freeze up tighter’n the St. Lawrence. When they _do_, they go out like an ice-jam in April. Up till we prisoners left—four days—my Captain Mankeltow told me pretty much all about himself there was; his mother and sisters, and his bad brother that was a trooper in some Colonial corps, and how his father didn’t get on with him, and—well, everything, as I’ve said. They’re undomesticated, the British, compared with us. They talk about their own family affairs as if they belonged to someone else. ’Taint as if they hadn’t any shame, but it sounds like it. I guess they talk out loud what we think, and we talk out loud what they think. “I liked my Captain Mankeltow. I liked him as well as any man I’d ever struck. He was white. He gave me his silver drinking-flask, and I gave him the formula of my Laughtite. That’s a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in his vest-pocket, on the lowest count, if he has the knowledge to use it. No, I didn’t tell him the money-value. He was English. He’d send his valet to find out.