and creeping footsteps behind him. He
turned like a panther, but was not in time. The heavily driven toes of
the right boots of the younger St. Johns lifted him clear of the stairs,
and clean to the bottom of them. There he sat, his uniform a thing of
the past, his left eye blackening and closed, and roars of laughter
shaking him.

But Hamilton and Hannibal put the office more or less to rights, and
sat down gloomily at their respective desks. Up till now they had faced
being left behind, but this licking was too much. Each brooded over it,
while pretending to be up to the ears in work. Hamilton wrote a letter,
sealed it, addressed it, and presently rose.

"Bul," he said, and to Hannibal the whole manoeuver smacked suspicious,
"I'm going to run up and see the old man for a few minutes."

"All right," said Hannibal.

Hamilton reached the door and turned.

"By the way," he said, "I left a letter on my desk; wish you'd put a
stamp on it and mail it."

He went out.

Hannibal felt very lonely and fidgety.

"I think I'll just mail that letter and get it off my mind," he said.

He put on his hat, licked a stamp, and crossed to his brother's desk.
The letter was there, right enough, but it did not require a stamp, for
on it was written but one word, and that word was Hannibal.

Hannibal tore open the envelop and read:

DEAR OLD Bul: I can't stand it any longer, but you'll try and not be mad
with me for running off and leaving you to keep up the old place alone,
and damn it, Bul, two of us ought to go anyway....

The letter ran on for a little in the same strain. Hannibal put the
letter in his pocket, and sat down at his brother's desk.

"It will kill the old man if we all go," he said. "And of all three I'm
the one with the best rights to go and get shot."

He took from somewhere in his clothes a little gold locket, flat and
plain. Each of the St. John boys had carried one since their mother's
death. Facing her picture each had had engraved the motto which he had
chosen for himself to be his watchword in life. In John's locket was
engraved, "In fortis vinces"; in Hamilton's, "Deo volente"; and in
Hannibal's, "Carpe diem." But in Hannibal's locket there was another
picture besides that of his mother. He opened the locket with his
thumb-nails and laid it on the desk before him. Presently his eyes
dimmed, and he looked beyond the locket.

Hamilton St. John's ink-well was a globe of glass, with a hole like a
thi