"please say good-bye."

"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 an