“‘Rub it in, Doc, all you want,’ says I. ‘I guess we’re weak on foreign policy.’

“‘For a Yank,’ says Doc, putting on his specs and talking more mild, ‘you ain’t so bad. If you had come from below the line I reckon I would have liked you right smart. Now since your country has gone back on you, you have to come to the old doctor, whose cotton you burned and whose mules you stole, and whose niggers you freed to help you. Ain’t that so, Yank?’

“‘It is,’ says I heartily, ‘and let’s have a diagnosis of the case right away, for in two weeks’ time all you can do is to hold an autopsy and I don’t want to be amputated if I can help it.’

“‘Now,’ says Doc, businesslike, ‘it’s easy enough for you to get out of this scrape. Money’ll do it. You’ve got to pay a long string of ’em from General Pomposo down to this anthropoid ape guarding your door. About $10,000 will do the trick. Have you got the money?’

“‘Me?’ says I. ‘I’ve got one Chili dollar, two real pieces, and a medio.’

“‘Then if you’ve any last words, utter ’em,’ says that old reb. ‘The roster of your financial budget sounds quite much to me like the noise of a requiem.’

“‘Change the treatment,’ says I. ‘I admit that I’m short. Call a consultation or use radium or smuggle me in some saws or something.’

“‘Yank,’ says Doc Millikin, ‘I’ve a good notion to help you. There’s only one government in the world that can get you out of this difficulty; and that’s the Confederate States of America, the grandest nation that ever existed.’

“Just as you said to me I says to Doc: ‘Why, the Confederacy ain’t a nation. It’s been absolved forty years ago.’

“‘That’s a campaign lie,’ says Doc. ‘She’s running along as solid as the Roman Empire. She’s the only hope you’ve got. Now, you, being a Yank, have got to go through with some preliminary obsequies before you can get official aid. You’ve got to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederate Government. Then I’ll guarantee she does all she can for you. What do you say, Yank?—it’s your last chance.’

“‘If you’re fooling with me, Doc,’ I answers, ‘you’re no better than the United States. But as you say it’s the last chance, hurry up and swear me. I always did like corn whisky and ’possum, anyhow. I believe I’m half Southerner by nature. I’m willing to try the Ku-Klux in place of the Khaki. Get brisk.’

“Doc Millikin thinks awhile, and then he offers me this oath of allegiance to take without any kind of a chaser:

“ ‘I, Barnard O’Keefe, Yank, being�of sound body�but a Republican mind, Hereby swear to transfer my fealty, respect, and allegiance to the Confederate States of America, and the government thereof in consideration of said government, through its official acts and powers, obtaining my freedom and release from confinement and sentence of death brought about by the exuberance of my Irish proclivities and my general pizenness as a Yank.’

“I repeated these words after Doc, but they seemed to me a kind of hocus-pocus; and I don’t believe any life-insurance company in the country would have issued me a policy on the strength of ’em.

“Doc went away saying he would communicate with his government immediately.

“Say—you can imagine how I felt—me to be shot in two weeks, and my only hope for help being in a government that’s been dead so long that it isn’t even remembered except on Decoration Day and when Joe Wheeler signs the voucher for his pay-cheque. But it was all there was in sight; and somehow I thought Doc Millikin had something up his old alpaca sleeve that wasn’t all foolishness.