he were a military sentry.
You know the sort of thing I mean. Bandolier, belt, and frightfully
stiff about the back. He held up his hand and I stopped. 'A loyal man,'
he said. Well, I was, so far as I knew at that time, so I said 'You
bet.' 'That's not right,' said he. 'Give the countersign.' I hadn't
heard anything about a countersign, so I told him not to be a damned
fool, and that I'd break his head if he said I wasn't a loyal man. That
seemed to puzzle him a bit He got out a notebook and read a page or
two, looking at me and the car every now and then as if he wasn't quite
satisfied. I felt pretty sure, of course, that he was the man I wanted.
He couldn't very well be anyone else. So by way of cutting the business
short I told him I was loaded up with guns and cartridges, and that I
wished he'd hop in and show me where to go. 'That's all very fine,' he
said, 'but you oughtn't to be in a car like that' I told him there was
no use arguing about the car. I wasn't going back to change it to please
him. He asked me who I was, and I told him, mentioning that I was the
governor's son. I thought that might help him to make up his mind, and
it did. The governor is middling well known up in those parts, and the
mention of his name was enough. The fellow climbed in beside me. We
hadn't very far to go, as it turned out, and in the inside of twenty
minutes I was driving up the avenue of a big house. The size of it
rather surprised me, for I didn't think O'Meara was well enough off to
keep up a place of the kind. However, I was evidently expected, for I
was shown into the dining-room by a footman. There were three men at
breakfast, my old dad, Dopping--you know Dopping, don't you?"

Dopping is a retired cavalry colonel. I do business for him and know him
pretty well He is just the sort of man who would be in the thick of any
gun-running that was going on.

"There was another man," said Sam, "whom I didn't know and wasn't
introduced to. The fact is there wasn't much time for politeness. My dad
looked as if he'd been shot when he saw me, and old Dopping bristled all
over like an Irish terrier at the beginning of a fight, and asked me
who the devil I was and what I was doing there. Of course, he jolly well
knew who I was, and I thought he must know what brought me there, so I
just winked by way of letting him understand that I was in the game.
He got so red in the face that I thought he'd burst Then the other
man chipped in and ask