completely. I wondered if it had been a class-war, or a sectional
conflict. We'd had plenty of the latter, during our first century, but
all of them had been settled peacefully and Constitutionally. Well, some
of the things he'd read in Lingmuir's _Social History_ would be
surprises for him, too.

And then I took the bill out for another examination. It must have
gotten mixed with his spendable money--it was about the size of
ours--and I wondered how he had acquired enough of our money to pay his
train fare. Maybe he'd had a diamond and sold it, or maybe he'd had a
gun and held somebody up. If he had, I didn't know that I blamed him,
under the circumstances. I had an idea that he had some realization of
what had happened to him--the book, and the fake accent, to cover any
mistakes he might make. Well, I wished him luck, and then I unfolded the
dollar bill and looked at it again.

In the first place, it had been issued by the United States Department
of Treasury itself, not the United States Bank or one of the State
Banks. I'd have to think over the implications of that carefully. In the
second place, it was a silver certificate; why, in this other United
States, silver must be an acceptable monetary metal; maybe equally so
with gold, though I could hardly believe that. Then I looked at the
picture on the gray obverse side, and had to strain my eyes on the fine
print under it to identify it. It was Washington, all right, but a much
older Washington than any of the pictures of him I had ever seen. Then I
realized that I knew just where the Crossroads of Destiny for his world
and mine had been.

As every schoolchild among us knows, General George Washington was shot
dead at the Battle of Germantown, in 1777, by an English, or, rather,