afore you'd see anythin' else.' But I reckon you float it over your
house, eh?"

The consul here explained smilingly that he did NOT fly a flag over his
lodgings, and that except on national holidays it was not customary to
display the national ensign on the consulate.

"Then you can't do here--and you a CONSUL--what any nigger can do in the
States, eh? That's about how it pans out, don't it? But I didn't think
YOU'D tumble to it quite so quick, Jack."

At this mention of his Christian name, the consul turned sharply on the
speaker. A closer scrutiny of the face before him ended with a flash
of reminiscence. The fog without and within seemed to melt away; he was
standing once more on a Western hillside with this man; a hundred miles
of sparkling sunshine and crisp, dry air stretching around him, and
above a blue and arched sky that roofed the third of a continent with
six months' summer. And then the fog seemed to come back heavier and
thicker to his consciousness. He emotionally stretched out his hand to
the stranger. But it was the fog and his personal surroundings which now
seemed to be unreal.

"Why it's Harry Custer!" he said with a laugh that, however, ended in
a sigh. "I didn't recognize you in this half light." He then glanced
curiously toward the diffident young man, as if to identify another
possible old acquaintance.

"Well, I spotted you from the first," said Custer, "though I ain't seen
you since we were in Scott's Camp together. That's ten years ago. You're
lookin' at HIM," he continued, following the consul's wandering eye.