the mine always in my heart. Who knows what may not happen in a
year? I may be able to serve you even more. Who knows how long the
present Government will last? But I give you my word of honor, no
matter whether I be in Opposition or at the head of the Government, if
I receive every six months the retaining fee of which you speak, I will
be your representative. And my friends can do nothing. I despise
them. _I_ am the Opposition. You have done well, my dear sir, to
consider me alone."

Clay turned in his chair and looked back of him through the office to
the room beyond.

"Boys," he called, "you can come out now."

He rose and pushed his chair away and beckoned to the orderly who sat
in the saddle holding the General's horse. Langham and MacWilliams
came out and stood in the open door, and Mendoza rose and looked at
Clay.

"You can go now," Clay said to him, quietly. "And you can rise in the
Senate on Tuesday and move your vote of want of confidence and object
to our concession, and when you have resumed your seat the Secretary of
Mines will rise in his turn and tell the Senate how you stole out here
in the night and tried to blackmail me, and begged me to bribe you to
be silent, and that you offered to throw over your friends and to take
all that we would give you and keep it yourself. That will make you
popular with your friends, and will show the Government just what sort
of a leader it has working against it."

Clay took a step forward and shook his finger in the officer's face.
"Try to break that concession; try it. It was made by one Government
to a body of honest, decent business men, with a Government of their
own back of them, and if you interfere with our conceded rights to work
those mines, I'll have a man-of-war down here with white paint on her
hull, and she'll blow you and your little republic back up there into
the mountains. Now you can go."

Mendoza had straightened with surprise when Clay first began to speak,
and had then bent forward slightly as though he meant to interrupt him.
His eyebrows were lowered in a straight line, and his lips moved
quickly.

"You poor--" he began, contemptuously. "Bah," he exclaimed, "you're a
fool; I should have sent a servant to talk with you. You are a
child--but you are an insolent child," he cried, suddenly, his anger
breaking out, "and I shall punish you. You dare to call me names! You
shall fight me, you shall fight me to-morrow. You have i