ensign on the consulate.

"Then you can't do here--and you a CONSUL--what any nigger can do in the
States, eh? That's about how it pans out, don't it? But I didn't think
YOU'D tumble to it quite so quick, Jack."

At this mention of his Christian name, the consul turned sharply on the
speaker. A closer scrutiny of the face before him ended with a flash
of reminiscence. The fog without and within seemed to melt away; he was
standing once more on a Western hillside with this man; a hundred miles
of sparkling sunshine and crisp, dry air stretching around him, and
above a blue and arched sky that roofed the third of a continent with
six months' summer. And then the fog seemed to come back heavier and
thicker to his consciousness. He emotionally stretched out his hand to
the stranger. But it was the fog and his personal surroundings which now
seemed to be unreal.

"Why it's Harry Custer!" he said with a laugh that, however, ended in
a sigh. "I didn't recognize you in this half light." He then glanced
curiously toward the diffident young man, as if to identify another
possible old acquaintance.

"Well, I spotted you from the first," said Custer, "though I ain't seen
you since we were in Scott's Camp together. That's ten years ago. You're
lookin' at HIM," he continued, following the consul's wandering eye.
"Well, it's about him that I came to see you. This yer's a McHulish--a
genuine McHulish!"

He paused, as if to give effect to this statement. But the name
apparently offered no thrilling suggestion to the consul, who regarded
the young man closely for further explanation. He was a fair-faced youth
of about twenty years, with pale reddish-brown eyes, dark hair reddish
at the roots, and a singular white and pink waxiness of oval cheek,
which, however, narrowed suddenly at the angle of the jaw, and fell away
with the retreating chin.

"Yes," continued Custer; "I oughter say the ONLY McHulish. He is the
direct heir--and of royal descent! He's one of them McHulishes whose
name in them old history times was enough to whoop up the boys and make
'em paint the town red. A regular campaign boomer--the old McHulish was.
Stump speeches and brass-bands warn't in it with the boys when HE was
around. They'd go their bottom dollar and last cartridge--if they'd had
cartridges in them days--on him. That was the regular McHulish gait. And
Malcolm there's the last of 'em--got the same style of features, too."

Ludicrous as the situation