. He looked from Garibaldi to
Walker and back again, and could not see any enormous difference between
them. He said as much to one of the bakery's customers, a restaurateur
with a well-oiled tongue, who had praised him for his intrepidity in the
rescue of the medal-peddler, which, it seems, he had witnessed. With
this praise still upon his lips the caterer walked with Richling to the
restaurant door, and detained him there to enlarge upon the subject of
Spanish-American misrule, and the golden rewards that must naturally
fall to those who should supplant it with stable government. Richling
listened and replied and replied again and listened; and presently the
restaurateur startled him with an offer to secure him a captain's
commission under Walker. He laughed incredulously; but the restaurateur,
very much in earnest, talked on; and by littles, but rapidly, Richling
admitted the value of the various considerations urged. Two or three
months of rapid adventure; complete physical renovation--of
course--natural sequence; the plaudits of a grateful people; maybe
fortune also, but at least a certainty of finding the road to it,--all
this to meet Mary with next fall.

"I'm in a great hurry just now," said Richling; "but I'll talk about
this thing with you again to-morrow or next day," and so left.

The restaurateur turned to his head-waiter, stuck his tongue in his
cheek, and pulled down the lower lid of an eye with his forefinger. He
meant to say he had been lying for the pure fun of it.

When Dr. Sevier came that afternoon to see Reisen--of whom there was now
but little left, and that little unable to leave the bed--Richling took
occasion to raise the subject that had entangled his fancy. He was
careful to say nothing of himself or the restaurateur, or anything,
indeed, but a timid generality or two. But the Doctor responded with a
clear, sudden energy that, when he was gone, left Richling feeling
painfully blank, and yet unable to find anything to resent except the
Doctor's superfluous--as he thought, quite superfluous--mention of the
island of Cozumel.

However, and after all, that which for the most part kept the public
mind heated was, as we have said, the political campaign. Popular
feeling grew tremulous with it as the landscape did under the burning
sun. It was a very hot summer. Not a good one for feeble folk; and one
early dawn poor Reisen suddenly felt all his reason come back to him,
opened his eyes, and lo!