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 traordinary automatic machine cannon, and wherever there was trouble there was Mr. Marsden's father crazy to show it off. My Mr. Marsden, from the time he was nine to fifteen, went along, too, helping to chase up war ministers and wars and revolutions. The pair had the most awful ups and downs, riding one day in gold carriages with kings and dictators, and the next half starving and ignored. His father drew a considerable income from a ship-telegraph patent, and this allowed him to keep his liberty and his gun, and refuse what offers he got for it. And the worst of it was that it wasn't a good gun, and the only people who could make it work properly were Mr. Marsden and his father. But if nobody was very eager to buy it, they were always willing enough to give Mr. Marsden a front seat on the chance of his making good, and thus it was they were always to the fore, and shooting off their wonderful gun.

They averaged a war a year—not big ones, of course, because they don't occur so often,