n the broad arm of the chair.
Donnegan sauntered back.

"You see," he murmured, "you will not let me go."

At this the colonel raised his head suddenly and glared into the eyes of
his guest, and yet so perfect was his muscular and nerve control that he
did not interrupt the thin stream of amber which trickled into one of
the glasses. Looking down again, he finished pouring the drinks. They
pledged each other with a motion, and drank. It was very old, very oily.
And Donnegan smiled as he put down the empty glass.

"Sit down," said the colonel in a new voice.

Donnegan obeyed.

"Fate," went on the colonel, "rules our lives. We give our honest
endeavors, but the deciding touch is the hand of Fate."

He garnished this absurd truism with a wave of his hand so solemn that
Donnegan was chilled; as though the fat man were actually conversant
with the Three Sisters.

"Fate has brought you to me; therefore, I intend to keep you."

"Here?"

"In my service. I am about to place a great mission and a great trust in
your hands."

"In the hands of a man you know nothing about?"

"I know you as if I had raised you."

Donnegan smiled, and shaking his head, the red hair flashed and
shimmered.

"As long as there is no work attached to the mission, it may be
agreeable to me."

"But there is work."

"Then the contract is broken before it is made."

"You are rash. But I had rather begin with a dissent and then work
upward."

Donnegan waited.

"To balance against work--"

"Excuse me. Nothing balances against work for me."

"To balance against work," continued the colonel, raising a white hand
and by that gesture crushing the protest of Donnegan, "there is a great
reward."

"Colonel Macon, I have never worked for money before and I shall not
work for it now."

"You trouble me with interruptions. Who mentioned money? You shall not
have a penny!"

"No?"

"The reward shall grow out of the work."

"And the work?"

"Is fighting."

At this Donnegan narrowed his eyes and searched the fat man thoroughly.
It sounded like the talk of a charlatan, and yet there was a crispness
to these sentences that made him suspect something underneath. For that
matter, in certain districts his name and his career were known. He had
never dreamed that that reputation could have come within a thousand
miles of this part of the mountain desert.

"You should have told me in the first place," he said with some anger,
"that you knew