did know when it would begin, and fixed that date at about eight
months after the actual declaration--after millions of pounds had been
expended and hundreds of thousands of English dead.

Cold, powerful, relentless, and determined, Edestone knew that it was
useless to appeal to a sense of humanity in this man who, sitting at
his desk early and late, directed the great machine that slowly but
surely was drawing to itself the youth and vigour of all England,
there to feed and fatten, flatter and amuse these poor boys from the
country, and with music and noise destroy their sensibilities before
sending them across the Channel to live for their few remaining days
in holes in the ground that no self-respecting beast would with his
own consent occupy.

To appeal to a sense of duty so strong in him as applied to England,
was one thing; but to convince him that Edestone as an American had a
sense of duty to the nations of Europe was something quite different.
This man of steel had no imagination, he was convinced, and to ask him
to follow him in his flights would be as useless as to request him to
whistle Yankee Doodle.

He had a chance to decide all this while Rockstone, who had risen and
received him with courtesy, was reading the letters he presented. The
great soldier's face never changed once as he read them all with care.

"Your credentials are satisfactory," he finally said, "but I do not
quite understand what it is you wish. Your letters say that you do not
want to sell anything, which is most extraordinary; I thought you
Americans always wanted to sell something." And his face assumed the
expression of a man who, having no sense of humour, thought that he