an attacked was one of your Majesty's
friends?'

"'I would have it so appear,' said the King. 'For a great many reasons I
should prefer that it were not known that it was I--'

"'You, your Majesty?' I cried, really astonished. 'I had no idea--"

"'You are discretion itself, Colonel Cox,' laughed the King, 'and to assure
you of my appreciation of the fact, I beg that you will accept a small gift
which you will some day shortly receive anonymously. It will not be at all
commensurate to the service you have rendered me, nor to the discretion
which you have already so kindly observed regarding the principals involved
in last night's affair, but in the spirit of friendly interest and
appreciation back of it, it will be of a value inestimable.'

"I began to try to tell his Majesty that my government did not permit me to
accept gifts of any kind from persons royal or otherwise, but it was not
possible to do so, and twenty minutes later my audience was over and I
returned to the Legation with the uncomfortable sense of having placed
myself in a position where I must either violate the King's confidence to
acquire the permission of Congress to accept his gift, or break the laws by
which all who are connected with the diplomatic service, directly or
indirectly, are strictly governed. I assure you it was not in the least
degree in the hope of personal profit that I chose the latter course. Ten
days later a pair of massive golden pepper-pots came to me, and, as the King
had intimated would be the case, there was nothing about them to show whence
they had come. Taken altogether, they were the most exquisitely wrought
specimens of the goldsmith's artistry that I had ever seen, and upon their
under side was inscribed in a cipher which no one unfamiliar with the affair
of that midnight fracas would even have observed--'A.R. to C.C.'--Alphonso
Rex to Carrington Cox being, of course, the significance thereof. They were
put away with my other belongings, and two years later, when my activities
were transferred to London, I took them away with me.

"In London I chose to live in chambers, and was soon established at No. 7
Park Place, St. James's, a more than comfortable and centrally located
apartment-house where I found pretty much everything in the way of
convenience that a man situated as I was could reasonably ask for. I had not
been there more than six months, however, when something happened that made
the ease of apartment life see