Leave
this country, and don't be seen about here again, for if so, you will be
killed."
"Precisely," he admitted. "In fact, I was just intending to arrange a
permanent departure. That was why I was asking you to promise me to--in
short, to keep your own promise. There's going to be war next spring.
The dreams of this strange new man Lincoln, out in the West, are going
to come true--there will be catastrophies here. That is why I am here.
War, one of the great games, is something that one must sometimes cross
the globe to play. I will be here to have a hand in this one."
"You have had much of a hand in it already," I hazarded. He smiled
frankly.
"Yes," he said, "one must live. I admit I have been what you call a
secret agent. There is much money behind me, big politics, big
commercial interests. I love the big games, and my game and my task--my
duty to my masters, has been to split this country along a clean line
from east to west, from ocean to ocean--to make two countries of it! You
will see that happen, my friend."
"No one will ever see it happen," I said to him, soberly.
"Under which flag, then, for you?" he asked quickly.
"The flag you saw on the frontier, Orme," I answered him.
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