“No.”

That refusal caused Peter gloom all the way to the station.  But if Leonore could have looked into the future she would have seen in her refusal the bitterest sorrow she had ever known.

CHAPTER LV.

OATHS.

As soon as Peter was on the express he went into the smoking cabin of the sleeping-car, and lighting a cigar, took out a letter and read it over again.  While he was still reading it, a voice exclaimed: 

“Good!  Here’s Peter.  So you are in it too?” Ogden continued, as Ray and he took seats by Peter.

“I always did despise Anarchists and Nihilists,” sighed Ray, “since I was trapped into reading some of those maudlin Russian novels, with their eighth-century ideas grafted on nineteenth-century conditions.  Baby brains stimulated with whisky.”

Ogden turned to Peter.  “How serious is it likely to be, Colonel?”

“I haven’t any idea,” replied Peter, “The staff is of the opposite party now, and I only have a formal notification to hold my regiment in readiness.  If it’s nothing but this Socialist and Anarchist talk, there is no real danger in it.”

“Why not?”

“This country can never be in danger from discontent with our government, for it’s what the majority want it to be, or if not, it is made so at the next election.  That is the beauty of a Democracy.  The majority always supports the government.  We fight our revolutions with ballots, not with bullets.”

“Yet Most says that blood must be shed.”

“I suppose,” said Peter, “that he has just reached the stage of intelligence which doctors had attained when they bled people to make them strong.”

“What can you do with such a fellow’s talk?  You can’t argue with him,” said Ogden.

“Talk!” muttered Ray, “Don’t dignify it with that word.  Gibberish!”

“No?” said Peter, “It’s too earnest to deserve that name.  The man can’t express himself, but way down underneath all the absurd talk of ‘natural monopolies,’ and of ‘the oppression of the money-power,’ there lies a germ of truth, without which none of their theories would have a corporal’s guard of honest believers.  We have been working towards that truth in an unsystematic way for centuries, but we are a long way from it, and till we solve how to realize it, we shall have ineffectual discontent.”

“But that makes the whole thing only the more arrant nonsense,” grumbled Ray.  “It’s foolish enough in all conscience sake, if they had a chance of success, but when they haven’t any, why the deuce do they want to drag us poor beggars back from Newport?”

“Why did Rome insist on burning while Nero fiddled?” queried Peter smiling.  “We should hear nothing of socialism and anarchy if Newport and the like had no existence.”

“I believe at heart you’re a Socialist yourself,” cried Ray.

“No danger,” laughed Ogden; “his bank account is too large.  No man with Peter’s money is ever a Socialist”