E PROXY OF PAKENHAM
XXXVI THE PALO ALTO BALL
EPILOGUE

CHAPTER I

THE MAKERS OF MAPS

There is scarcely a single cause in which a woman is not engaged in
some way fomenting the suit.--_Juvenal_.

"Then you offer me no hope, Doctor?" The gray mane of Doctor Samuel Ward
waved like a fighting crest as he made answer:

"Not the sort of hope you ask." A moment later he added: "John, I am
ashamed of you."

The cynical smile of the man I called my chief still remained upon his
lips, the same drawn look of suffering still remained upon his gaunt
features; but in his blue eye I saw a glint which proved that the answer
of his old friend had struck out some unused spark of vitality from the
deep, cold flint of his heart.

"I never knew you for a coward, Calhoun," went on Doctor Ward, "nor any
of your family I give you now the benefit of my personal acquaintance
with this generation of the Calhouns. I ask something more of you than
faint-heartedness."

The keen eyes turned upon him again with the old flame of flint which a
generation had known--a generation, for the most part, of enemies. On my
chief's face I saw appear again the fighting flush, proof of his
hard-fibered nature, ever ready to rejoin with challenge when challenge
came.

"Did not Saul fall upon his own sword?" asked John Calhoun. "Have not
devoted leaders from the start of the world till now sometimes rid the
scene of the responsible figures in lost fights, the men on whom blame
rested for failures?"

"Cowards!" rejoined Doctor Ward. "Cowards, every one of them! Were there
not other swords upon which they might have fallen--those of their
enemies?"

"It is not my own hand--my own sword, Sam," said Calhoun. "Not that. You
know as well as I that I am already marked and doomed, even as I sit at
my table to-night. A walk of a wet night here in Washington--a turn
along the Heights out there when the winter wind is keen--yes, Sam, I
see my grave before me, close enough; but how can I rest easy in that
grave? Man, we have not yet dreamed how great a country this may be. We
_must_ have Texas. We _must_ have also Oregon. We must have--"

"Free?" The old doctor shrugged his shoulders and smiled at the arch
pro-slavery exponent.

"Then, since you mention it, yes!" retorted Calhoun fretfully. "But I
shall not go into the old argument of those who say that black is white,
that South is North. It is only for my own race that I plan a