cry. Near Jack the deer bounded over a hedge and took a new direction.
His Majesty--a short, stout man with blue eyes and aquiline nose,
wearing a lace cocked hat and brown velvet coatee and high boots with
spurs--dismounted not twenty feet from the stage-coach, saying with
great animation:

"_Vite! Donnez moi un cheval frais_."

Instantly remounting, he bounded over the hedge, followed by his train.

2

A letter from Jack presents all this color of the journey and avers
that he reached the house of Franklin in Passy about two o'clock in the
afternoon of a pleasant May day. The savant greeted his young friend
with an affectionate embrace.

"Sturdy son of my beloved country, you bring me joy and a new problem,"
he said.

"What is the problem?" Jack inquired.

"That of moving Margaret across the channel. I have a double task now.
I must secure the happiness of America and of Jack Irons."

He read the despatches and then the Doctor and the young man set out in
a coach for the palace of Vergennes, the Prime Minister. Colonel Irons
was filled with astonishment at the tokens of veneration for the
white-haired man which he witnessed in the streets of Paris.

"The person of the King could not have attracted more respectful
attention," he writes. "A crowd gathered about the coach when we were
leaving it and every man stood with uncovered head as we passed on our
way to the palace door. In the crowd there was much whispered praise
of '_Le grand savant_.' I did not understand this until I met, in the
office of the Compte de Vergennes, the eloquent Senator Gabriel Honore
Riquetti de Mirabeau. What an impressive name! Yet I think he
deserves it. He has the eye of Mars and the hair of Samson and the
tongue of an angel, I am told. In our talk, I assured him that in
Philadelphia Franklin came and went and was less observed than the town
crier.

"'But your people seem to adore him,' I said.

"'As if he were a god,' Mirabeau answered. 'Yes, it is true and it is
right. Has he not, like Jove, hurled the lightning of heaven in his
right hand? Is he not an unpunished Prometheus? Is he not breaking
the scepter of a tyrant?'

"Going back to his home where in the kindness of his heart he had asked
me to live, he endeavored, modestly, to explain the evidences of high
regard which were being showered upon him.

"'It happens that my understanding and small control of a mysterious
and violent force of nature ha