great range of mountains," he began, "slashing across the
American states and beautifully named the Alleghanies, there is a vast
measure of coal beds. It is thither that the emigrants from Southern
Europe journey. They mine out the coal, sometimes descending into the
earth through pits, or what in your language are called shafts, and
sometimes following the stratum of the coal bed into the hill.

"This underworld, monsieur--this, sunless world, built underneath the
mountains, is a section of Europe slipped under the American Republic.
The language spoken there is not English. The men laboring in those
buried communities cry out sparate when they are about to shoot down the
coal with powder. It is Italy under there. There is a river called the
Monongahela in those mountains. It is an Indian name."

He paused.

"And so, monsieur, what happened along it doubtless reminded me of
Cooper's story--Bough of Oak and the case of Corporal Flint."

He took another cigarette out of a box on the table, but he did not
light it.

"In one of the little mining villages along this river with the
enchanting name there was a man physically like the people of the Iliad;
and with that, monsieur, he had a certain cast of mind not unHellenic.
He was tall, weighed two hundred and forty pounds, lean as a gladiator,
and in the vigor of golden youth.

"There were no wars to journey after and no adventures; but there was
danger and adventure here. This land was full of cockle, winnowed out
of Italy, Austria and the whole south of Europe. It took courage and the
iron hand of the state to keep the peace. Here was a life of danger;
and this Ionian--big, powerful, muscled like the heroes of the Circus
Maximus--entered this perilous service.

"Monsieur, I have said his mind was Hellenic, like his big, wonderful
body. Mark you how of heroic antiquity it was! It was his boast, among
the perils that constantly beset him, that no criminal should ever take
his life; that, if ever he should receive a mortal wound from the hand
of the assassins about him, he would not wait to die in agony by it. He
himself would sever the damaged thread of life and go out like a man!

"Observe, monsieur, how like the great heroes of legend--like the
wounded Saul when he ordered his armor-bearer to kill him; like Brutus
when he fell on his sword!"

He looked intently at the American.

"Doubtless, monsieur," he went on, "those near this man along the
Monongahela did