"That you will suffer capital punishment, as you deserve."
"Really?"
"That you will be hanged as sure, sir, as two and two make four."
"Then, sir, I have yet a chance," said J.T. Maston, reflectingly. "If you were a little better mathematician you would not say that two and two are four. You simply prove that all mathematicians have been fools until to-day in affirming that the sum of two numbers is equal to one of their parts; that is, two and two are exactly four."
"Sir!" cried the President, absolutely puzzled.
"Well," said J.T. Maston, "if you would say, as sure as one and one are two, all right. That is absolutely evident, because that is no longer a theorem; this is a definition."
After this lesson in simple arithmetic the President of the Committee went out, followed by Mrs. Evangelina Scorbitt, who had so much admiration for the calculator that she did not venture to look at him.
CHAPTER XIV.
VERY SHORT, BUT IN WHICH "X" TAKES A GEOGRAPHICAL VALUE.
Very luckily for J.T. Maston, the Federal Government received the following telegram sent by the American Consul stationed at Zanzibar: