"'I'm not joking,' says O'Connor. 'And I've got $1,500 cash to work the
scheme with. I've taken a liking to you. Do you want it, or not?'

"'I'm not working,' I told him; 'but how is it to be? Do I eat during
the fomentation of the insurrection, or am I only to be Secretary of War
after the country is conquered? Is it to be a pay envelope or only a
portfolio?'

"I'll pay all expenses,' says O'Connor. 'I want a man I can trust. If
we succeed you may pick out any appointment you want in the gift of the
government.'

"'All right, then,' says I. 'You can get me a bunch of draying contracts
and then a quick-action consignment to a seat on the Supreme Court
bench so I won't be in line for the presidency. The kind of cannon they
chasten their presidents with in that country hurt too much. You can
consider me on the pay-roll.'

"Two weeks afterward O'Connor and me took a steamer for the small,
green, doomed country. We were three weeks on the trip. O'Connor said
he had his plans all figured out in advance; but being the commanding
general, it consorted with his dignity to keep the details concealed
from his army and cabinet, commonly known as William T. Bowers. Three
dollars a day was the price for which I joined the cause of liberating
an undiscovered country from the ills that threatened or sustained it.
Every Saturday night on the steamer I stood in line at parade rest, and
O'Connor handed ever the twenty-one dollars.

"The town we landed at was named Guayaquerita, so they told me. 'Not for