I had wondered if he had found
his black-haired Princess and the slender son he had dreamed was
with her in the royal gardens of Tardos Mors, awaiting his return.
Or, had he found that he had been too late, and thus gone back to
a living death upon a dead world? Or was he really dead after all,
never to return either to his mother Earth or his beloved Mars?
Thus was I lost in useless speculation one sultry August evening
when old Ben, my body servant, handed me a telegram. Tearing it
open I read:
'Meet me to-morrow hotel Raleigh Richmond.
'JOHN CARTER'
Early the next morning I took the first train for Richmond and
within two hours was being ushered into the room occupied by John
Carter.
As I entered he rose to greet me, his old-time cordial smile of
welcome lighting his handsome face. Apparently he had not aged a
minute, but was still the straight, clean-limbed fighting-man of
thirty. His keen grey eyes were undimmed, and the only lines upon
his face were the lines of iron character and determination that
always had been there since first I remembered him, nearly thirty-five
years before.
'Well, nephew,' he greeted me, 'do you feel as though you were
seeing a ghost, or suffering from the effects of too many of Uncle
Ben's juleps?'
'Juleps, I reckon,' I replied, 'for I certainly feel mighty good;
but maybe it's just the sight of you again that affects me.
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