A Volunteer with Pike

"No!" I said. Before my mental vision rose the whiskey-flushed face and portly figure of the pompous, fussy old General.

"You speak emphatically."

"Sir, I give you common opinion when I say there are few men of standing in the Upper Territory, or in the Lower, for that matter, who would trust the General out of sight either with their reputations or with their purses."

My companion frowned as severely as it seemed his philosophic temperament would permit. "You forget, sir, that you are speaking of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Republic."

"A commander whose appointment, it is said, was urged on the grounds that it would keep him out of mischief,--a man who is charged with having been implicated in all the separatist plots of the nineties."

"And if so, what then? With the removal of the misguided Federalists from the control of public affairs, and the purchase of Louisi