“Will you answer me, sir, or will you not?” cried the colonel, flushing angrily beneath the other’s steady stare.
“Perhaps I will and perhaps I will not,” replied Myles, whose very calmness betrayed the tumult of his feelings. “It depends entirely upon what authority you can show for asking them, and the manner in which they are put. So long as you see fit to insult me I shall only answer you with silence.”
The audacity of this speech fairly took away the colonel’s breath, and he stared at Myles in speechless amazement. Before he could recover himself the car door again opened. The figure that entered this time was not clad in uniform, but the guard allowed it to pass without hesitation.
Turning, and recognizing the new-comer, the colonel exclaimed:
“Here is a case that will interest you, sir. It will make a capital paragraph for your paper. Of all the strikers, train-wreckers, and other rascally characters I ever met this one has the most monumental impudence and brazen assurance. Why, what do you think—”
But the colonel never finished his remark, for Myles, who had gained his feet, here interrupted him with:
“Hello, Billings, old man!”
“Am I a Dutchman or am I not!” cried Billings, for it was indeed he, as he sprang past the colonel and grasped his friend’s hand. “The voice is that of Myles Manning, while the face and general get-up is that of a mud-lark. What are you doing here? and what is the meaning of this melancholy aspect?”
“That is what this military gentleman with the unfortunate manner has been trying to find out,” replied Myles, with a grim smile.
“Military gentleman? Unfortunate manner?” repeated Billings, in a perplexed tone. “Perhaps there is some misunderstanding between you two. Colonel Pepper, allow me to present my friend, Mr. Manning, of the Phonograph. Colonel Pepper is in command of the 50th Regiment, N. G. S. N. Y. X. Z., etc., and, if I do say it to his face, as I shouldn’t, is one of the best fellows to be found outside of a newspaper office.”