"Why, look at you, man!" he broke out fiercely, after a moment. "The
type and picture of combat! Good bone, fine bone and hard; a hard head
and bony; little eye, set deep; strong, wiry muscles, not too
big--fighting muscles, not dough; clean limbs; strong fingers; good
arms, legs, neck; wide chest--"

"Then you give me hope?" Calhoun flashed a smile at him.

"No, sir! If you do your duty, there is no hope for you to live. If you
do not do your duty, there is no hope for you to die, John Calhoun, for
more than two years to come--perhaps five years--six. Keep up this
work--as you must, my friend--and you die as surely as though I shot you
through as you sit there. Now, is this any comfort to you?"

A gray pallor overspread my master's face. That truth is welcome to no
man, morbid or sane, sound or ill; but brave men meet it as this one
did.

"Time to do much!" he murmured to himself. "Time to mend many broken
vessels, in those two years. One more fight--yes, let us have it!"

But Calhoun the man was lost once more in Calhoun the visionary, the
fanatic statesman. He summed up, as though to himself, something of the
situation which then existed at Washington.

"Yes, the coast is clearer, now that Webster is out of the cabinet, but
Mr. Upshur's death last month brings in new complications. Had he
remained our secretary of state, much might have been done. It was only
last October he proposed to Texas a treaty of annexation."