damn it, sir, I’d like to have every one of them, especially Jeff Whitworth, at the end of a halter and feed him a raw mule, hoof and ears.  I’m probably going to be done to death all alone before the pack of wolves, but I’m going to die hard—­for Bill Faulkner, who holds in his hand the honor of his State and my State, I’ll die hard!” And he spoke the words with such a fierceness that his white mustache, which was waxed with the propriety of the world, divided like crossed silver swords beneath his straight nose with its thin and trembling nostrils.

“It will be that I can help you protect this honor of the Gouverneur Faulkner and the State of Harpeth, will it not, my Uncle Robert?” I asked with a great anxiety.  “If you must fall on the field of honor it will be the glory of Robert Carruthers of Grez and Bye to fall beside you, sir.  I am a very good sport, my father has said.”

“God bless my soul, how like Henry you are, boy!” exclaimed my Uncle, the General Robert, and he did lay one of his long and very strong arms across my shoulder and give to me the embrace for which I had so longed; but for not enough time for me to yield myself to it.  “Henry always wanted to tag ‘Brother Bob,’ and he too—­would—­have died—­fighting for me—­at my side.  I’ve been hard—­and when I heard of his death—­I wanted you, boy, I wanted you more—­Now what do you mean, sir, by making me forget for one moment the fix Bill Faulkner and I are in?” And my Uncle, the General Robert, gave to me a good shake as he extracted his very large white handkerchief and blew upon his nose with such power that the black chauffeur looked around at us and made the car to jump even as he and I had done.

“And those mules that it would be your wish to feed to that Mr. Jeff Whitworth, my Uncle Robert, will you not tell me further about them?  In Paris it is said that they are a very good food when made fat after being old or wounded in the army.  I have—­”

“That will do, sir.  If you’ve had to eat mule in Paris don’t tell me about it.  My constitution wouldn’t stand that, though during our war, just before Vicksburg, I ate—­but we won’t go into that either.  Now this is the situation, as much as a lad from the wilds of Paris could understand it.  The French Government wants five thousand mules by the fall of the year, and there are no such mules in the world as this State produces.  They are sending a man over here to try to make a deal with the State of Harpeth to purchase the mules from private breeders, graze them on the government lands and deliver them in a lot for shipment the first of August at Savannah.  There is no authority on the statute book for the State to make such a deal, but Jeff Whitworth has fixed up a sort of contract, that wouldn’t hold water in the courts, by which the Governor of the State, Williamson Faulkner, grants the grazing rights on the State’s lands to a private company of which he is to be a member, which, in a way, guarantees the deal.  They’ve made