Солдаты фортуны, 7-12 глава

7 глава
В десять часов того же вечера Клэй начал готовить себя к
бал во дворце правительства и МакУильямс, который не был приглашен,
смотрел, как он одевался с критическим одобрением, которое не показывало никаких признаков зависти.

Чем лучше делать честь президенту, тем Клей вывел несколько
иностранные заказы, и МакУильямс помог ему связать на шее
ошейник Красного Орла, который ему дал германский император, и
пристегнуть через грудь ленту и крест Звезды Оланчо,
и испанский орден и орден Почетного легиона на лацкане его пальто.
MacWilliams изучил эффект крошечных эмалированных крестов с его
голова с одной стороны, и с тем же воздухом ласковой гордости и
беспокойство, что мать показывает над первым платьем дочери.

«Есть еще?» - с тревогой спросил он.

«У меня есть несколько военных медалей», - ответил Клей, улыбаясь сомнительно. "Но я
не в форме ".

«О, это нормально», заявил МакУильямс. "Надень их, надень их всех
на. Дайте девушкам угощение. Все подумают, что им дали
все равно подвиги плавания; но они хорошо появятся с фронта.
Итак, ты выглядишь как барабанщик или заклинатель. "

- Я этого не делаю, - сказал Клей. "Я похож на французского посла, и я вряд ли
поймите, как вы находите мужество говорить со мной вообще ".

Он поднялся на холм в приподнятом настроении и нашел карету у двери
и король, мистер Лэнгем, и мисс Лэнгем, сидящая в ожидании его. Они
были готовы к отъезду, и мисс Лэнгэм только что села в
карета, когда они услышали спеша через плиточный пол быстро,
легкий шаг и шорох шелка, и повернувшись они увидели надежду стоя
в дверях, сияющий и улыбающийся. Она носила белый морок, который
дотянулись до земли, и это оставило ее руки и плечи голыми. Ее
волосы были высоко одеты на голову, и она энергично тянула на
пара длинных перчаток загорелого цвета. Трансформация была такой
полный, и девушка выглядела так намного старше и так статно и
красиво, что два молодых человека смотрели на нее в молчаливом восхищении
и удивление.

«Почему, Надежда!» воскликнула ее сестра. «Что это значит?»

Надежда остановилась в какой-то тревоге и зажала волосы обеими руками.

«Что это такое?» - спросила она; «что-то не так?»

"Почему, мой дорогой ребенок, - сказала ее сестра, - вы не думаете идти
с нами, ты? "

«Не идти?» вторила младшая сестра, в огорчении. "Почему, Алиса, почему
нет? Меня спросили.

«Но, надеюсь, отец», сказала старшая сестра, выйдя из
карета и обращение к мистеру Лэнгему, "вы не собирались, что Хоуп
нужно идти, не так ли? Она еще не вышла.

«О, ерунда», сказала Хоуп, демонстративно. Но она рисовала на дыхании
быстро и покраснело, когда она увидела, как два молодых человека уходят из
слух об этом семейном кризисе. Она чувствовала, что ее заставляют
похоже на избалованного ребенка. «Это не считается здесь», сказала она,
"и я хочу идти. Я думал, ты знал, что я постоянно иду. Мари
специально сделал это для меня.
***
At ten o'clock that same evening Clay began to prepare himself for the
ball at the Government palace, and MacWilliams, who was not invited,
watched him dress with critical approval that showed no sign of envy.

The better to do honor to the President, Clay had brought out several
foreign orders, and MacWilliams helped him to tie around his neck the
collar of the Red Eagle which the German Emperor had given him, and to
fasten the ribbon and cross of the Star of Olancho across his breast,
and a Spanish Order and the Legion of Honor to the lapel of his coat.
MacWilliams surveyed the effect of the tiny enamelled crosses with his
head on one side, and with the same air of affectionate pride and
concern that a mother shows over her daughter's first ball-dress.

"Got any more?" he asked, anxiously.

"I have some war medals," Clay answered, smiling doubtfully. "But I'm
not in uniform."

"Oh, that's all right," declared MacWilliams.  "Put 'em on, put 'em all
on.  Give the girls a treat.  Everybody will think they were given for
feats of swimming, anyway; but they will show up well from the front.
Now, then, you look like a drum-major or a conjuring chap."

"I do not," said Clay.  "I look like a French Ambassador, and I hardly
understand how you find courage to speak to me at all."

He went up the hill in high spirits, and found the carriage at the door
and King, Mr. Langham, and Miss Langham sitting waiting for him.  They
were ready to depart, and Miss Langham had but just seated herself in
the carriage when they heard hurrying across the tiled floor a quick,
light step and the rustle of silk, and turning they saw Hope standing
in the doorway, radiant and smiling.  She wore a white frock that
reached to the ground, and that left her arms and shoulders bare.  Her
hair was dressed high upon her head, and she was pulling vigorously at
a pair of long, tan-colored gloves.  The transformation was so
complete, and the girl looked so much older and so stately and
beautiful, that the two young men stared at her in silent admiration
and astonishment.

"Why, Hope!" exclaimed her sister.  "What does this mean?"

Hope stopped in some alarm, and clasped her hair with both hands.

"What is it?" she asked; "is anything wrong?"

"Why, my dear child," said her sister, "you're not thinking of going
with us, are you?"

"Not going?" echoed the younger sister, in dismay.  "Why, Alice, why
not? I was asked."

"But, Hope-- Father," said the elder sister, stepping out of the
carriage and turning to Mr. Langham, "you didn't intend that Hope
should go, did you?  She's not out yet."

"Oh, nonsense," said Hope, defiantly.  But she drew in her breath
quickly and blushed, as she saw the two young men moving away out of
hearing of this family crisis.  She felt that she was being made to
look like a spoiled child.  "It doesn't count down here," she said,
"and I want to go.  I thought you knew I was going all the time.  Marie
made this frock for me on purpose."

"I don't think Hope is old enough," the elder sister said, addressing
her father, "and if she goes to dances here, there's no reason why she
should not go to those at home."

"But I don't want to go to dances at home," interrupted Hope.

Mr. Langham looked exceedingly uncomfortable, and turned appealingly to
his elder daughter.  "What do you think, Alice?" he said, doubtfully.

"I'm sorry," Miss Langham replied, "but I know it would not be at all
proper.  I hate to seem horrid about it, Hope, but indeed you are too
young, and the men here are not the men a young girl ought to meet."

"You meet them, Alice," said Hope, but pulling off her gloves in token
of defeat.

"But, my dear child, I'm fifty years older than you are."

"Perhaps Alice knows best, Hope," Mr. Langham said.  "I'm sorry if you
are disappointed."

Hope held her head a little higher, and turned toward the door.

"I don't mind if you don't wish it, father," she said. "Good-night."
She moved away, but apparently thought better of it, and came back and
stood smiling and nodding to them as they seated themselves in the
carriage.  Mr. Langham leaned forward and said, in a troubled voice,
"We will tell you all about it in the morning.  I'm very sorry.  You
won't be lonely, will you? I'll stay with you if you wish."

"Nonsense!" laughed Hope.  "Why, it's given to you, father; don't
bother about me.  I'll read something or other and go to bed."

"Good-night, Cinderella," King called out to her.

"Good-night, Prince Charming," Hope answered.

Both Clay and King felt that the girl would not mind missing the ball
so much as she would the fact of having been treated like a child in
their presence, so they refrained from any expression of sympathy or
regret, but raised their hats and bowed a little more impressively than
usual as the carriage drove away.

The picture Hope made, as she stood deserted and forlorn on the steps
of the empty house in her new finery, struck Clay as unnecessarily
pathetic.  He felt a strong sense of resentment against her sister and
her father, and thanked heaven devoutly that he was out of their class,
and when Miss Langham continued to express her sorrow that she had been
forced to act as she had done, he remained silent.  It seemed to Clay
such a simple thing to give children pleasure, and to remember that
their woes were always out of all proportion to the cause.  Children,
dumb animals, and blind people were always grouped together in his mind
as objects demanding the most tender and constant consideration.  So
the pleasure of the evening was spoiled for him while he remembered the
hurt and disappointed look in Hope's face, and when Miss Langham asked
him why he was so preoccupied, he told her bluntly that he thought she
had been very unkind to Hope, and that her objections were absurd.

Miss Langham held herself a little more stiffly.  "Perhaps you do not
quite understand, Mr. Clay," she said.  "Some of us have to conform to
certain rules that the people with whom we best like to associate have
laid down for themselves.  If we choose to be conventional, it is
probably because we find it makes life easier for the greater number.
You cannot think it was a pleasant task for me.  But I have given up
things of much more importance than a dance for the sake of
appearances, and Hope herself will see to-morrow that I acted for the
best."

Clay said he trusted so, but doubted it, and by way of re-establishing
himself in Miss Langham's good favor, asked her if she could give him
the next dance.  But Miss Langham was not to be propitiated.

"I'm sorry," she said, "but I believe I am engaged until supper-time.
Come and ask me then, and I'll have one saved for you.  But there is
something you can do," she added.  "I left my fan in the carriage--do
you think you could manage to get it for me without much trouble?"

"The carriage did not wait.  I believe it was sent back," said Clay,
"but I can borrow a horse from one of Stuart's men, and ride back and
get it for you, if you like."

"How absurd!" laughed Miss Langham, but she looked pleased,
notwithstanding.

"Oh, not at all," Clay answered.  He was smiling down at her in some
amusement, and was apparently much entertained at his idea. "Will you
consider it an act of devotion?" he asked.

There was so little of devotion, and so much more of mischief in his
eyes, that Miss Langham guessed he was only laughing at her, and shook
her head.

"You won't go," she said, turning away.  She followed him with her
eyes, however, as he crossed the room, his head and shoulders towering
above the native men and women.  She had never seen him so resplendent,
and she noted, with an eye that considered trifles, the orders, and his
well-fitting white gloves, and his manner of bowing in the Continental
fashion, holding his opera-hat on his thigh, as though his hand rested
on a sword.  She noticed that the little Olanchoans stopped and looked
after him, as he pushed his way among them, and she could see that the
men were telling the women who he was.  Sir Julian Pindar, the old
British Minister, stopped him, and she watched them as they laughed
together over the English war medals on the American's breast, which
Sir Julian touched with his finger.  He called the French Minister and
his pretty wife to look, too, and they all laughed and talked together
in great spirits, and Miss Langham wondered if Clay was speaking in
French to them.

Miss Langham did not enjoy the ball; she felt injured and aggrieved,
and she assured herself that she had been hardly used.

She had only done her duty, and yet all the sympathy had gone to her
sister, who had placed her in a trying position.  She thought it was
most inconsiderate.

Hope walked slowly across the veranda when the others had gone, and
watched the carriage as long as it remained in sight.  Then she threw
herself into a big arm-chair, and looked down upon her pretty frock and
her new dancing-slippers.  She, too, felt badly used.

The moonlight fell all about her, as it had on the first night of their
arrival, a month before, but now it seemed cold and cheerless, and gave
an added sense of loneliness to the silent house.  She did not go
inside to read, as she had promised to do, but sat for the next hour
looking out across the harbor.  She could not blame Alice.  She
considered that Alice always moved by rules and precedents, like a
queen in a game of chess, and she wondered why.  It made life so tame
and uninteresting, and yet people invariably admired Alice, and some
one had spoken of her as the noblest example of the modern gentlewoman.
She was sure she could not grow up to be any thing like that.  She was
quite confident that she was going to disappoint her family.  She
wondered if people would like her better if she were discreet like
Alice, and less like her brother Ted.  If Mr. Clay, for instance, would
like her better?  She wondered if he disapproved of her riding on the
engine with MacWilliams, and of her tearing through the mines on her
pony, and spearing with a lance of sugar-cane at the mongrel curs that
ran to snap at his flanks. She remembered his look of astonished
amusement the day he had caught her in this impromptu pig-sticking, and
she felt herself growing red at the recollection.  She was sure he
thought her a tomboy.  Probably he never thought of her at all.

Hope leaned back in the chair and looked up at the stars above the
mountains and tried to think of any of her heroes and princes in
fiction who had gone through such interesting experiences as had Mr.
Clay.  Some of them had done so, but they were creatures in a book and
this hero was alive, and she knew him, and had probably made him
despise her as a silly little girl who was scolded and sent off to bed
like a disobedient child.  Hope felt a choking in her throat and
something like a tear creep to her eyes: but she was surprised to find
that the fact did not make her ashamed of herself.  She owned that she
was wounded and disappointed, and to make it harder she could not help
picturing Alice and Clay laughing and talking together in some corner
away from the ball-room, while she, who understood him so well, and who
could not find the words to tell him how much she valued what he was
and what he had done, was forgotten and sitting here alone, like
Cinderella, by the empty fireplace.

The picture was so pathetic as Hope drew it, that for a moment she felt
almost a touch of self-pity, but the next she laughed scornfully at her
own foolishness, and rising with an impatient shrug, walked away in the
direction of her room.

But before she had crossed the veranda she was stopped by the sound of
a horse's hoofs galloping over the hard sun-baked road that led from
the city, and before she had stepped forward out of the shadow in which
she stood the horse had reached the steps and his rider had pulled him
back on his haunches and swung himself off before the forefeet had
touched the ground.

Hope had guessed that it was Clay by his riding, and she feared from
his haste that some one of her people were ill.  So she ran anxiously
forward and asked if anything were wrong.

Clay started at her sudden appearance, and gave a short boyish laugh of
pleasure.

"I'm so glad you're still up," he said.  "No, nothing is wrong."  He
stopped in some embarrassment.  He had been moved to return by the fact
that the little girl he knew was in trouble, and now that he was
suddenly confronted by this older and statelier young person, his
action seemed particularly silly, and he was at a loss to explain it in
any way that would not give offence.

"No, nothing is wrong," he repeated.  "I came after something."

Clay had borrowed one of the cloaks the troopers wore at night from the
same man who had lent him the horse, and as he stood bareheaded before
her, with the cloak hanging from his shoulders to the floor and the
star and ribbon across his breast, Hope felt very grateful to him for
being able to look like a Prince or a hero in a book, and to yet remain
her Mr. Clay at the same time.

"I came to get your sister's fan," Clay explained.  "She forgot it."

The young girl looked at him for a moment in surprise and then
straightened herself slightly.  She did not know whether she was the
more indignant with Alice for sending such a man on so foolish an
errand, or with Clay for submitting to such a service.

"Oh, is that it?" she said at last.  "I will go and find you one."  She
gave him a dignified little bow and moved away toward the door, with
every appearance of disapproval.

"Oh, I don't know," she heard Clay say, doubtfully; "I don't have to go
just yet, do I?  May I not stay here a little while?"

Hope stood and looked at him in some perplexity.

"Why, yes," she answered, wonderingly.  "But don't you want to go back?
You came in a great hurry.  And won't Alice want her fan?"

"Oh, she has it by this time.  I told Stuart to find it.  She left it
in the carriage, and the carriage is waiting at the end of the plaza."

"Then why did you come?" asked Hope, with rising suspicion.

"Oh, I don't know," said Clay, helplessly.  "I thought I'd just like a
ride in the moonlight.  I hate balls and dances anyway, don't you?  I
think you were very wise not to go."

Hope placed her hands on the back of the big arm-chair and looked
steadily at him as he stood where she could see his face in the
moonlight.  "You came back," she said, "because they thought I was
crying, and they sent you to see.  Is that it?  Did Alice send you?"
she demanded.

Clay gave a gasp of consternation.

"You know that no one sent me," he said.  "I thought they treated you
abominably, and I wanted to come and say so.  That's all.  And I wanted
to tell you that I missed you very much, and that your not coming had
spoiled the evening for me, and I came also because I preferred to talk
to you than to stay where I was. No one knows that I came to see you.
I said I was going to get the fan, and I told Stuart to find it after
I'd left.  I just wanted to see you, that's all.  But I will go back
again at once."

While he had been speaking Hope had lowered her eyes from his face and
had turned and looked out across the harbor.  There was a strange,
happy tumult in her breast, and she was breathing so rapidly that she
was afraid he would notice it.  She also felt an absurd inclination to
cry, and that frightened her.  So she laughed and turned and looked up
into his face again.  Clay saw the same look in her eyes that he had
seen there the day when she had congratulated him on his work at the
mines.  He had seen it before in the eyes of other women and it
troubled him.  Hope seated herself in the big chair, and Clay tossed
his cloak on the floor at her feet and sat down with his shoulders
against one of the pillars.  He glanced up at her and found that the
look that had troubled him was gone, and that her eyes were now smiling
with excitement and pleasure.

"And did you bring me something from the ball in your pocket to comfort
me," she asked, mockingly.

"Yes, I did," Clay answered, unabashed.  "I brought you some bonbons."

"You didn't, really!" Hope cried, with a shriek of delight. "How absurd
of you!  The sort you pull?"

"The sort you pull," Clay repeated, gravely.  "And also a dance-card,
which is a relic of barbarism still existing in this Southern capital.
It has the arms of Olancho on it in gold, and I thought you might like
to keep it as a souvenir."  He pulled the card from his coat-pocket and
said, "May I have this dance?"

"You may," Hope answered.  "But you wouldn't mind if we sat it out,
would you?"

"I should prefer it," Clay said, as he scrawled his name across the
card.  "It is so crowded inside, and the company is rather mixed."
They both laughed lightly at their own foolishness, and Hope smiled
down upon him affectionately and proudly.  "You may smoke, if you
choose; and would you like something cool to drink?" she asked,
anxiously.  "After your ride, you know," she suggested, with hospitable
intent.  Clay said that he was very comfortable without a drink, but
lighted a cigar and watched her covertly through the smoke, as she sat
smiling happily and quite unconsciously upon the moonlit world around
them.  She caught Clay's eye fixed on her, and laughed lightly.

"What is it?" he said.

"Oh, I was just thinking," Hope replied, "that it was much better to
have a dance come to you, than to go to the dance."

"Does one man and a dance-card and three bonbons constitute your idea
of a ball?"

"Doesn't it?  You see, I am not out yet, I don't know."

"I should think it might depend a good deal upon the man," Clay
suggested.

"That sounds as though you were hinting," said Hope, doubtfully.  "Now
what would I say to that if I were out?"

"I don't know, but don't say it," Clay answered.  "It would probably be
something very unflattering or very forward, and in either case I
should take you back to your chaperon and leave you there."

Hope had not been listening.  Her eyes were fixed on a level with his
tie, and Clay raised his hand to it in some trepidation. "Mr. Clay,"
she began abruptly and leaning eagerly forward, "would you think me
very rude if I asked you what you did to get all those crosses?  I know
they mean something, and I do so want to know what.  Please tell me."

"Oh, those!" said Clay.  "The reason I put them on to-night is because
wearing them is supposed to be a sort of compliment to your host.  I
got in the habit abroad--"

"I didn't ask you that," said Hope, severely.  "I asked you what you
did to get them.  Now begin with the Legion of Honor on the left, and
go right on until you come to the end, and please don't skip anything.
Leave in all the bloodthirsty parts, and please don't be modest."

"Like Othello," suggested Clay.

"Yes," said Hope; "I will be Desdemona."

"Well, Desdemona, it was like this," said Clay, laughing.  "I got that
medal and that star for serving in the Nile campaign, under Wolseley.
After I left Egypt, I went up the coast to Algiers, where I took
service under the French in a most disreputable organization known as
the Foreign Legion--"

"Don't tell me," exclaimed Hope, in delight, "that you have been a
Chasseur d'Afrique!  Not like the man in 'Under Two Flags'?"

"No, not at all like that man," said Clay, emphatically.  "I was just a
plain, common, or garden, sappeur, and I showed the other
good-for-nothings how to dig trenches.  Well, I contaminated the
Foreign Legion for eight months, and then I went to Peru, where I--"

"You're skipping," said Hope.  "How did you get the Legion of Honor?"

"Oh, that?" said Clay.  "That was a gallery play I made once when we
were chasing some Arabs.  They took the French flag away from our
color-bearer, and I got it back again and waved it frantically around
my head until I was quite certain the Colonel had seen me doing it, and
then I stopped as soon as I knew that I was sure of promotion."

"Oh, how can you?" cried Hope.  "You didn't do anything of the sort.
You probably saved the entire regiment."

"Well, perhaps I did," Clay returned.  "Though I don't remember it, and
nobody mentioned it at the time."

"Go on about the others," said Hope.  "And do try to be truthful."

"Well, I got this one from Spain, because I was President of an
International Congress of Engineers at Madrid.  That was the ostensible
reason, but the real reason was because I taught the Spanish
Commissioners to play poker instead of baccarat.  The German Emperor
gave me this for designing a fort, and the Sultan of Zanzibar gave me
this, and no one but the Sultan knows why, and he won't tell.  I
suppose he's ashamed.  He gives them away instead of cigars.  He was
out of cigars the day I called."

"What a lot of places you have seen," sighed Hope.  "I have been in
Cairo and Algiers, too, but I always had to walk about with a
governess, and she wouldn't go to the mosques because she said they
were full of fleas.  We always go to Homburg and Paris in the summer,
and to big hotels in London.  I love to travel, but I don't love to
travel that way, would you?"

"I travel because I have no home," said Clay.  "I'm different from the
chap that came home because all the other places were shut.  I go to
other places because there is no home open."

"What do you mean?" said Hope, shaking her head.  "Why have you no
home?"

"There was a ranch in Colorado that I used to call home," said Clay,
"but they've cut it up into town lots.  I own a plot in the cemetery
outside of the town, where my mother is buried, and I visit that
whenever I am in the States, and that is the only piece of earth
anywhere in the world that I have to go back to."

Hope leaned forward with her hands clasped in front of her and her eyes
wide open.

"And your father?" she said, softly; "is he--is he there, too--"

Clay looked at the lighted end of his cigar as he turned it between his
fingers.

"My father, Miss Hope," he said, "was a filibuster, and went out on the
'Virginius' to help free Cuba, and was shot, against a stone wall.  We
never knew where he was buried."

"Oh, forgive me; I beg your pardon," said Hope.  There was such
distress in her voice that Clay looked at her quickly and saw the tears
in her eyes.  She reached out her hand timidly, and touched for an
instant his own rough, sunburned fist, as it lay clenched on his knee.
"I am so sorry," she said, "so sorry."  For the first time in many
years the tears came to Clay's eyes and blurred the moonlight and the
scene before him, and he sat unmanned and silent before the simple
touch of a young girl's sympathy.

An hour later, when his pony struck the gravel from beneath his hoofs
on the race back to the city, and Clay turned to wave his hand to Hope
in the doorway, she seemed, as she stood with the moonlight falling
about her white figure, like a spirit beckoning the way to a new
paradise.



VIII

Clay reached the President's Palace during the supper-hour, and found
Mr. Langham and his daughter at the President's table. Madame Alvarez
pointed to a place for him beside Alice Langham, who held up her hand
in welcome.  "You were very foolish to rush off like that," she said.

"It wasn't there," said Clay, crowding into the place beside her.

"No, it was here in the carriage all the time.  Captain Stuart found it
for me."

"Oh, he did, did he?" said Clay; "that's why I couldn't find it.  I am
hungry," he laughed, "my ride gave me an appetite." He looked over and
grinned at Stuart, but that gentleman was staring fixedly at the
candles on the table before him, his eyes filled with concern.  Clay
observed that Madame Alvarez was covertly watching the young officer,
and frowning her disapproval at his preoccupation.  So he stretched his
leg under the table and kicked viciously at Stuart's boots.  Old
General Rojas, the Vice-President, who sat next to Stuart, moved
suddenly and then blinked violently at the ceiling with an expression
of patient suffering, but the exclamation which had escaped him brought
Stuart back to the present, and he talked with the woman next him in a
perfunctory manner.

Miss Langham and her father were waiting for their carriage in the
great hall of the Palace as Stuart came up to Clay, and putting his
hand affectionately on his shoulder, began pointing to something
farther back in the hall.  To the night-birds of the streets and the
noisy fiacre drivers outside, and to the crowd of guests who stood on
the high marble steps waiting for their turn to depart, he might have
been relating an amusing anecdote of the ball just over.

"I'm in great trouble, old man," was what he said.  "I must see you
alone to-night.  I'd ask you to my rooms, but they watch me all the
time, and I don't want them to suspect you are in this until they must.
Go on in the carriage, but get out as you pass the Plaza Bolivar and
wait for me by the statue there."

Clay smiled, apparently in great amusement.  "That's very good," he
said.

He crossed over to where King stood surveying the powdered beauties of
Olancho and their gowns of a past fashion, with an intensity of
admiration which would have been suspicious to those who knew his
tastes.  "When we get into the carriage," said Clay, in a low voice,
"we will both call to Stuart that we will see him to-morrow morning at
breakfast."

"All right," assented King.  "What's up?"

Stuart helped Miss Langham into her carriage, and as it moved away King
shouted to him in English to remember that he was breakfasting with him
on the morrow, and Clay called out in Spanish, "Until to-morrow at
breakfast, don't forget."  And Stuart answered, steadily, "Good night
until to-morrow at one."

As their carriage jolted through the dark and narrow street, empty now
of all noise or movement, one of Stuart's troopers dashed by it at a
gallop, with a lighted lantern swinging at his side.  He raised it as
he passed each street crossing, and held it high above his head so that
its light fell upon the walls of the houses at the four corners.  The
clatter of his horse's hoofs had not ceased before another trooper
galloped toward them riding more slowly, and throwing the light of his
lantern over the trunks of the trees that lined the pavements.  As the
carriage passed him, he brought his horse to its side with a jerk of
the bridle, and swung his lantern in the faces of its occupants.

"Who lives?" he challenged.

"Olancho," Clay replied.

"Who answers?"

"Free men," Clay answered again, and pointed at the star on his coat.

The soldier muttered an apology, and striking his heels into his
horse's side, dashed noisily away, his lantern tossing from side to
side, high in the air, as he drew rein to scan each tree and passed
from one lamp-post to the next.

"What does that mean?" said Mr. Langham; "did he take us for
highwaymen?"

"It is the custom," said Clay.  "We are out rather late, you see."

"If I remember rightly, Clay," said King, "they gave a ball at Brussels
on the eve of Waterloo."

"I believe they did," said Clay, smiling.  He spoke to the driver to
stop the carriage, and stepped down into the street.

"I have to leave you here," he said; "drive on quickly, please; I can
explain better in the morning."

The Plaza Bolivar stood in what had once been the centre of the
fashionable life of Olancho, but the town had moved farther up the
hill, and it was now far in the suburbs, its walks neglected and its
turf overrun with weeds.  The houses about it had fallen into disuse,
and the few that were still occupied at the time Clay entered it showed
no sign of life.  Clay picked his way over the grass-grown paths to the
statue of Bolivar, the hero of the sister republic of Venezuela, which
still stood on its pedestal in a tangle of underbrush and hanging
vines.  The iron railing that had once surrounded it was broken down,
and the branches of the trees near were black with sleeping buzzards.
Two great palms reared themselves in the moonlight at either side, and
beat their leaves together in the night wind, whispering and murmuring
together like two living conspirators.

"This ought to be safe enough," Clay murmured to himself. "It's just
the place for plotting.  I hope there are no snakes."  He seated
himself on the steps of the pedestal, and lighting a cigar, remained
smoking and peering into the shadows about him, until a shadow blacker
than the darkness rose at his feet, and a voice said, sternly, "Put out
that light.  I saw it half a mile away."

Clay rose and crushed his cigar under his foot.  "Now then, old man,"
he demanded briskly, "what's up?  It's nearly daylight and we must
hurry."

Stuart seated himself heavily on the stone steps, like a man tired in
mind and body, and unfolded a printed piece of paper. Its blank side
was damp and sticky with paste.

"It is too dark for you to see this," he began, in a strained voice,
"so I will translate it to you.  It is an attack on Madame Alvarez and
myself.  They put them up during the ball, when they knew my men would
be at the Palace.  I have had them scouring the streets for the last
two hours tearing them down, but they are all over the place, in the
caf;s and clubs.  They have done what they were meant to do."

Clay took another cigar from his pocket and rolled it between his lips.
"What does it say?" he asked.

"It goes over the old ground first.  It says Alvarez has given the
richest birthright of his country to aliens--that means the mines and
Langham--and has put an alien in command of the army--that is meant for
me.  I've no more to do with the army than you have--I only wish I had!
And then it says that the boundary aggressions of Ecuador and Venezuela
have not been resented in consequence.  It asks what can be expected of
a President who is as blind to the dishonor of his country as he is to
the dishonor of his own home?"

Clay muttered under his breath, "Well, go on.  Is it explicit? More
explicit than that?"

"Yes," said Stuart, grimly.  "I can't repeat it.  It is quite clear
what they mean."

"Have you got any of them?" Clay asked.  "Can you fix it on some one
that you can fight?"

"Mendoza did it, of course," Stuart answered, "but we cannot prove it.
And if we could, we are not strong enough to take him. He has the city
full of his men now, and the troops are pouring in every hour."

"Well, Alvarez can stop that, can't he?"

"They are coming in for the annual review.  He can't show the people
that he is afraid of his own army."

"What are you going to do?"

"What am I going to do?" Stuart repeated, dully.  "That is what I want
you to tell me.  There is nothing I can do now.  I've brought trouble
and insult on people who have been kinder to me than my own blood have
been.  Who took me in when I was naked and clothed me, when I hadn't a
friend or a sixpence to my name.  You remember--I came here from that
row in Colombia with my wound, and I was down with the fever when they
found me, and Alvarez gave me the appointment.  And this is how I
reward them.  If I stay I do more harm.  If I go away I leave them
surrounded by enemies, and not enemies who fight fair, but damned
thieves and scoundrels, who stab at women and who fight in the dark.  I
wouldn't have had it happen, old man, for my right arm! They--they have
been so kind to me, and I have been so happy here--and now!"  The boy
bowed his face in his hands and sat breathing brokenly while Clay
turned his unlit cigar between his teeth and peered at him curiously
through the darkness.  "Now I have made them both unhappy, and they
hate me, and I hate myself, and I have brought nothing but trouble to
every one.  First I made my own people miserable, and now I make my
best friends miserable, and I had better be dead.  I wish I were dead.
I wish I had never been born."

Clay laid his hand on the other's bowed shoulder and shook him gently.
"Don't talk like that," he said; "it does no good. Why do you hate
yourself?"

"What?" asked Stuart, wearily, without looking up.  "What did you say?"

"You said you had made them hate you, and you added that you hated
yourself.  Well, I can see why they naturally would be angry for the
time, at least.  But why do you hate yourself? Have you reason to?"

"I don't understand," said Stuart.

"Well, I can't make it any plainer," Clay replied.  "It isn't a
question I will ask.  But you say you want my advice.  Well, my advice
to my friend and to a man who is not my friend, differ. And in this
case it depends on whether what that thing--" Clay kicked the paper
which had fallen on the ground--"what that thing says is true."

The younger man looked at the paper below him and then back at Clay,
and sprang to his feet.

"Why, damn you," he cried, "what do you mean?"

He stood above Clay with both arms rigid at his side and his head bent
forward.  The dawn had just broken, and the two men saw each other in
the ghastly gray light of the morning.  "If any man," cried Stuart
thickly, "dares to say that that blackguardly lie is true I'll kill
him.  You or any one else.  Is that what you mean, damn you?  If it is,
say so, and I'll break every bone of your body."

"Well, that's much better," growled Clay, sullenly.  "The way you went
on wishing you were dead and hating yourself made me almost lose faith
in mankind.  Now you go make that speech to the President, and then
find the man who put up those placards, and if you can't find the right
man, take any man you meet and make him eat it, paste and all, and beat
him to death if he doesn't. Why, this is no time to whimper--because
the world is full of liars.  Go out and fight them and show them you
are not afraid. Confound you, you had me so scared there that I almost
thrashed you myself.  Forgive me, won't you?" he begged earnestly. He
rose and held out his hand and the other took it, doubtfully. "It was
your own fault, you young idiot," protested Clay. "You told your story
the wrong way.  Now go home and get some sleep and I'll be back in a
few hours to help you.  Look!" he said.  He pointed through the trees
to the sun that shot up like a red hot disk of heat above the cool
green of the mountains. "See," said Clay, "God has given us another
day.  Seven battles were fought in seven days once in my country.
Let's be thankful, old man, that we're NOT dead, but alive to fight our
own and other people's battles."

The younger man sighed and pressed Clay's hand again before he dropped
it.

"You are very good to me," he said.  "I'm not just quite myself this
morning.  I'm a bit nervous, I think.  You'll surely come, won't you?"

"By noon," Clay promised.  "And if it does come," he added, "don't
forget my fifteen hundred men at the mines."

"Good! I won't," Stuart replied.  "I'll call on you if I need them."
He raised his fingers mechanically to his helmet in salute, and
catching up his sword turned and strode away erect and soldierly
through the debris and weeds of the deserted plaza.

Clay remained motionless on the steps of the pedestal and followed the
younger man with his eyes.  He drew a long breath and began a leisurely
search through his pockets for his match-box, gazing about him as he
did so, as though looking for some one to whom he could speak his
feelings.  He lifted his eyes to the stern, smooth-shaven face of the
bronze statue above him that seemed to be watching Stuart's departing
figure.

"General Bolivar," Clay said, as he lit his cigar, "observe that young
man.  He is a soldier and a gallant gentleman.  You, sir, were a great
soldier--the greatest this God-forsaken country will ever know--and you
were, sir, an ardent lover.  I ask you to salute that young man as I
do, and to wish him well."  Clay lifted his high hat to the back of the
young officer as it was hidden in the hanging vines, and once again,
with grave respect to the grim features of the great general above him,
and then smiling at his own conceit, he ran lightly down the steps and
disappeared among the trees of the plaza.



IX

Clay slept for three hours.  He had left a note on the floor
instructing MacWilliams and young Langham not to go to the mines, but
to waken him at ten o'clock, and by eleven the three men were galloping
off to the city.  As they left the Palms they met Hope returning from a
morning ride on the Alameda, and Clay begged her, with much concern,
not to ride abroad again.  There was a difference in his tone toward
her.  There was more anxiety in it than the occasion seemed to justify,
and he put his request in the form of a favor to himself, while the day
previous he would simply have told her that she must not go riding
alone.

"Why?" asked Hope, eagerly.  "Is there going to be trouble?"

"I hope not," Clay said, "but the soldiers are coming in from the
provinces for the review, and the roads are not safe."

"I'd be safe with you, though," said Hope, smiling persuasively upon
the three men.  "Won't you take me with you, please?"

"Hope," said young Langham in the tone of the elder brother's brief
authority, "you must go home at once."

Hope smiled wickedly.  "I don't want to," she said.

"I'll bet you a box of cigars I can beat you to the veranda by fifty
yards," said MacWilliams, turning his horse's head.

Hope clasped her sailor hat in one hand and swung her whip with the
other.  "I think not," she cried, and disappeared with a flutter of
skirts and a scurry of flying pebbles.

"At times," said Clay, "MacWilliams shows an unexpected knowledge of
human nature."

"Yes, he did quite right," assented Langham, nodding his head
mysteriously.  "We've no time for girls at present, have we?"

"No, indeed," said Clay, hiding any sign of a smile.

Langham breathed deeply at the thought of the part he was to play in
this coming struggle, and remained respectfully silent as they trotted
toward the city.  He did not wish to disturb the plots and counterplots
that he was confident were forming in Clay's brain, and his devotion
would have been severely tried had he known that his hero's mind was
filled with a picture of a young girl in a blue shirt-waist and a
whipcord riding-skirt.

Clay sent for Stuart to join them at the restaurant, and MacWilliams
arriving at the same time, the four men seated themselves conspicuously
in the centre of the caf; and sipped their chocolate as though
unconscious of any imminent danger, and in apparent freedom from all
responsibilities and care.  While MacWilliams and Langham laughed and
disputed over a game of dominoes, the older men exchanged, under cover
of their chatter, the few words which they had met to speak.

The manifestoes, Stuart said, had failed of their purpose.  He had
already called upon the President, and had offered to resign his
position and leave the country, or to stay and fight his maligners, and
take up arms at once against Mendoza's party. Alvarez had treated him
like a son, and bade him be patient.  He held that Caesar's wife was
above suspicion because she was Caesar's wife, and that no canards
posted at midnight could affect his faith in his wife or in his friend.
He refused to believe that any coup d'etat was imminent, save the one
which he himself meditated when he was ready to proclaim the country in
a state of revolution, and to assume a military dictatorship.

"What nonsense!" exclaimed Clay.  "What is a military dictatorship
without soldiers?  Can't he see that the army is with Mendoza?"

"No," Stuart replied.  "Rojas and I were with him all the morning.
Rojas is an old trump, Clay.  He's not bright and he's old-fashioned;
but he is honest.  And the people know it.  If I had Rojas for a chief
instead of Alvarez, I'd arrest Mendoza with my own hand, and I wouldn't
be afraid to take him to the carcel through the streets.  The people
wouldn't help him.  But the President doesn't dare.  Not that he hasn't
pluck," added the young lieutenant, loyally, "for he takes his life in
his hands when he goes to the review tomorrow, and he knows it.  Think
of it, will you, out there alone with a field of five thousand men
around him!  Rojas thinks he can hold half of them, as many as Mendoza
can, and I have my fifty.  But you can't tell what any one of them will
do for a drink or a dollar.  They're no more soldiers than these
waiters.  They're bandits in uniform, and they'll kill for the man that
pays best."

"Then why doesn't Alvarez pay them?" Clay growled.

Stuart looked away and lowered his eyes to the table.  "He hasn't the
money, I suppose," he said, evasively.  "He--he has transferred every
cent of it into drafts on Rothschild.  They are at the house now,
representing five millions of dollars in gold--and her jewels,
too--packed ready for flight."

"Then he does expect trouble?" said Clay.  "You told me--"

"They're all alike; you know them," said Stuart.  "They won't believe
they're in danger until the explosion comes, but they always have a
special train ready, and they keep the funds of the government under
their pillows.  He engaged apartments on the Avenue Kleber six months
ago."

"Bah!" said Clay.  "It's the old story.  Why don't you quit him?"

Stuart raised his eyes and dropped them again, and Clay sighed. "I'm
sorry," he said.

MacWilliams interrupted them in an indignant stage-whisper. "Say, how
long have we got to keep up this fake game?" he asked.  "I don't know
anything about dominoes, and neither does Ted.  Tell us what you've
been saying.  Is there going to be trouble?  If there is, Ted and I
want to be in it.  We are looking for trouble."

Clay had tipped back his chair, and was surveying the restaurant and
the blazing plaza beyond its open front with an expression of cheerful
unconcern.  Two men were reading the morning papers near the door, and
two others were dragging through a game of dominoes in a far corner.
The heat of midday had settled on the place, and the waiters dozed,
with their chairs tipped back against the walls.  Outside, the awning
of the restaurant threw a broad shadow across the marble-topped tables
on the sidewalk, and half a dozen fiacre drivers slept peacefully in
their carriages before the door.

The town was taking its siesta, and the brisk step of a stranger who
crossed the tessellated floor and rapped with his knuckles on the top
of the cigar-case was the only sign of life.  The newcomer turned with
one hand on the glass case and swept the room carelessly with his eyes.
They were hard blue eyes under straight eyebrows.  Their owner was
dressed unobtrusively in a suit of rough tweed, and this and his black
hat, and the fact that he was smooth-shaven, distinguished him as a
foreigner.

As he faced them the forelegs of Clay's chair descended slowly to the
floor, and he began to smile comprehendingly and to nod his head as
though the coming of the stranger had explained something of which he
had been in doubt.  His companions turned and followed the direction of
his eyes, but saw nothing of interest in the newcomer.  He looked as
though he might be a concession hunter from the States, or a Manchester
drummer, prepared to offer six months' credit on blankets and hardware.

Clay rose and strode across the room, circling the tables in such a way
that he could keep himself between the stranger and the door.  At his
approach the new-comer turned his back and fumbled with his change on
the counter.

"Captain Burke, I believe?" said Clay.  The stranger bit the cigar he
had just purchased, and shook his head.  "I am very glad to see you,"
Clay continued.  "Sit down, won't you?  I want to talk with you."

"I think you've made a mistake," the stranger answered, quietly.  "My
name is--"

"Colonel, perhaps, then," said Clay.  "I might have known it. I
congratulate you, Colonel."

The man looked at Clay for an instant, with the cigar clenched between
his teeth and his blue eyes fixed steadily on the other's face.  Clay
waved his hand again invitingly toward a table, and the man shrugged
his shoulders and laughed, and, pulling a chair toward him, sat down.

"Come over here, boys," Clay called.  "I want you to meet an old friend
of mine, Captain Burke."

The man called Burke stared at the three men as they crossed the room
and seated themselves at the table, and nodded to them in silence.

"We have here," said Clay, gayly, but in a low voice, "the key to the
situation.  This is the gentleman who supplies Mendoza with the sinews
of war.  Captain Burke is a brave soldier and a citizen of my own or of
any country, indeed, which happens to have the most sympathetic
Consul-General."

Burke smiled grimly, with a condescending nod, and putting away the
cigar, took out a brier pipe and began to fill it from his
tobacco-pouch.  "The Captain is a man of few words and extremely modest
about himself," Clay continued, lightly; "so I must tell you who he is
myself.  He is a promoter of revolutions.  That is his business,--a
professional promoter of revolutions, and that is what makes me so glad
to see him again.  He knows all about the present crisis here, and he
is going to tell us all he knows as soon as he fills his pipe.  I ought
to warn you, Burke," he added, "that this is Captain Stuart, in charge
of the police and the President's cavalry troop.  So, you see, whatever
you say, you will have one man who will listen to you."

Burke crossed one short fat leg over the other, and crowded the tobacco
in the bowl of his pipe with his thumb.

"I thought you were in Chili, Clay," he said.

"No, you didn't think I was in Chili," Clay replied, kindly. "I left
Chili two years ago.  The Captain and I met there," he explained to the
others, "when Balmaceda was trying to make himself dictator.  The
Captain was on the side of the Congressionalists, and was furnishing
arms and dynamite. The Captain is always on the winning side, at least
he always has been--up to the present.  He is not a creature of
sentiment; are you, Burke?  The Captain believes with Napoleon that God
is on the side that has the heaviest artillery."

Burke lighted his pipe and drummed absentmindedly on the table with his
match-box.

"I can't afford to be sentimental," he said.  "Not in my business."

"Of course not," Clay assented, cheerfully.  He looked at Burke and
laughed, as though the sight of him recalled pleasant memories.  "I
wish I could give these boys an idea of how clever you are, Captain,"
he said.  "The Captain was the first man, for instance, to think of
packing cartridges in tubs of lard, and of sending rifles in
piano-cases.  He represents the Welby revolver people in England, and
half a dozen firms in the States, and he has his little stores in Tampa
and Mobile and Jamaica, ready to ship off at a moment's notice to any
revolution in Central America.  When I first met the Captain," Clay
continued, gleefully, and quite unmindful of the other's continued
silence, "he was starting off to rescue Arabi Pasha from the island of
Ceylon.  You may remember, boys, that when Dufferin saved Arabi from
hanging, the British shipped him to Ceylon as a political prisoner.
Well, the Captain was sent by Arabi's followers in Egypt to bring him
back to lead a second rebellion. Burke had everybody bribed at Ceylon,
and a fine schooner fitted out and a lot of ruffians to do the
fighting, and then the good, kind British Government pardoned Arabi the
day before Burke arrived in port.  And you never got a cent for it; did
you, Burke?"

Burke shook his head and frowned.

"Six thousand pounds sterling I was to have got for that," he said,
with a touch of pardonable pride in his voice, "and they set him free
the day before I got there, just as Mr. Clay tells you."

"And then you headed Granville Prior's expedition for buried treasure
off the island of Cocos, didn't you?" said Clay.  "Go on, tell them
about it.  Be sociable.  You ought to write a book about your different
business ventures, Burke, indeed you ought; but then," Clay added,
smiling, "nobody would believe you." Burke rubbed his chin,
thoughtfully, with his fingers, and looked modestly at the ceiling, and
the two younger boys gazed at him with open-mouthed interest.

"There ain't anything in buried treasure," he said, after a pause,
"except the money that's sunk in the fitting out.  It sounds good, but
it's all foolishness."

"All foolishness, eh?" said Clay, encouragingly.  "And what did you do
after Balmaceda was beaten?--after I last saw you?"

"Crespo," Burke replied, after a pause, during which he pulled gently
on his pipe.  "'Caroline Brewer'--cleared from Key West for Curacao,
with cargo of sewing-machines and ploughs--beached below
Maracaibo--thirty-five thousand rounds and two thousand rifles--at
twenty bolivars apiece."

"Of course," said Clay, in a tone of genuine appreciation.  "I might
have known you'd be in that.  He says," he explained, "that he assisted
General Crespo in Venezuela during his revolution against Guzman
Blanco's party, and loaded a tramp steamer called the 'Caroline Brewer'
at Key West with arms, which he landed safely at a place for which he
had no clearance papers, and he received forty thousand dollars in our
money for the job--and very good pay, too, I should think," commented
Clay.

"Well, I don't know," Burke demurred.  "You take in the cost of leasing
the boat and provisioning her, and the crew's wages, and the cost of
the cargo; that cuts into profits.  Then I had to stand off shore
between Trinidad and Curacao for over three weeks before I got the
signal to run in, and after that I was chased by a gun-boat for three
days, and the crazy fool put a shot clean through my engine-room.  Cost
me about twelve hundred dollars in repairs."

There was a pause, and Clay turned his eyes to the street, and then
asked, abruptly, "What are you doing now?"

"Trying to get orders for smokeless powder," Burke answered, promptly.
He met Clay's look with eyes as undisturbed as his own.  "But they
won't touch it down here," he went on.  "It doesn't appeal to 'em.
It's too expensive, and they'd rather see the smoke.  It makes them
think--"

"How long did you expect to stay here?" Clay interrupted.

"How long?" repeated Burke, like a man in a witness-box who is trying
to gain time.  "Well, I was thinking of leaving by Friday, and taking a
mule-train over to Bogota instead of waiting for the steamer to Colon."
He blew a mouthful of smoke into the air and watched it drifting toward
the door with apparent interest.

"The 'Santiago' leaves here Saturday for New York.  I guess you had
better wait over for her," Clay said.  "I'll engage your passage, and,
in the meantime, Captain Stuart here will see that they treat you well
in the cuartel."

The men around the table started, and sat motionless looking at Clay,
but Burke only took his pipe from his mouth and knocked the ashes out
on the heel of his boot.  "What am I going to the cuartel for?" he
asked.

"Well, the public good, I suppose," laughed Clay.  "I'm sorry, but it's
your own fault.  You shouldn't have shown yourself here at all."

"What have you got to do with it?" asked Burke, calmly, as he began to
refill his pipe.  He had the air of a man who saw nothing before him
but an afternoon of pleasant discourse and leisurely inactivity.

"You know what I've got to do with it," Clay replied.  "I've got our
concession to look after."

"Well, you're not running the town, too, are you?" asked Burke.

"No, but I'm going to run you out of it," Clay answered. "Now, what are
you going to do,--make it unpleasant for us and force our hand, or
drive down quietly with our friend MacWilliams here?  He is the best
one to take you, because he's not so well known."

Burke turned his head and looked over his shoulder at Stuart.

"You taking orders from Mr. Clay, to-day, Captain Stuart?" he asked.

"Yes," Stuart answered, smiling.  "I agree with Mr. Clay in whatever he
thinks right."

"Oh, well, in that case," said Burke, rising reluctantly, with a
protesting sigh, "I guess I'd better call on the American minister."

"You can't.  He's in Ecuador on his annual visit," said Clay.

"Indeed!  That's bad for me," muttered Burke, as though in much
concern.  "Well, then, I'll ask you to let me see our consul here."

"Certainly," Clay assented, with alacrity.  "Mr. Langham, this young
gentleman's father, got him his appointment, so I've no doubt he'll be
only too glad to do anything for a friend of ours."

Burke raised his eyes and looked inquiringly at Clay, as though to
assure himself that this was true, and Clay smiled back at him.

"Oh, very well," Burke said.  "Then, as I happen to be an Irishman by
the name of Burke, and a British subject, I'll try Her Majesty's
representative, and we'll see if he will allow me to be locked up
without a reason or a warrant."

"That's no good, either," said Clay, shaking his head.  "You fixed your
nationality, as far as this continent is concerned, in Rio harbor, when
Peixoto handed you over to the British admiral, and you claimed to be
an American citizen, and were sent on board the 'Detroit.'  If there's
any doubt about that we've only got to cable to Rio Janeiro--to either
legation.  But what's the use? They know me here, and they don't know
you, and I do. You'll have to go to jail and stay there."

"Oh, well, if you put it that way, I'll go," said Burke. "But," he
added, in a lower voice, "it's too late, Clay."

The expression of amusement on Clay's face, and his ease of manner,
fell from him at the words, and he pulled Burke back into the chair
again.  "What do you mean?" he asked, anxiously.

"I mean just that, it's too late," Burke answered.  "I don't mind going
to jail.  I won't be there long.  My work's all done and paid for.  I
was only staying on to see the fun at the finish, to see you fellows
made fools of."

"Oh, you're sure of that, are you?" asked Clay.

"My dear boy!" exclaimed the American, with a suggestion in his speech
of his Irish origin, as his interest rose.  "Did you ever know me to go
into anything of this sort for the sentiment of it? Did you ever know
me to back the losing side?  No.  Well, I tell you that you fellows
have no more show in this than a parcel of Sunday-school children.  Of
course I can't say when they mean to strike.  I don't know, and I
wouldn't tell you if I did.  But when they do strike there'll be no
striking back.  It'll be all over but the cheering."

Burke's tone was calm and positive.  He held the centre of the stage
now, and he looked from one to the other of the serious faces around
him with an expression of pitying amusement.

"Alvarez may get off, and so may Madame Alvarez," he added, lowering
his voice and turning his face away from Stuart.  "But not if she shows
herself in the streets, and not if she tries to take those drafts and
jewels with her."

"Oh, you know that, do you?" interrupted Clay.

"I know nothing," Burke replied.  "At least, nothing to what the rest
of them know.  That's only the gossip I pick up at headquarters.  It
doesn't concern me.  I've delivered my goods and given my receipt for
the money, and that's all I care about. But if it will make an old
friend feel any more comfortable to have me in jail, why, I'll go,
that's all."

Clay sat with pursed lips looking at Stuart.  The two boys leaned with
their elbows on the tables and stared at Burke, who was searching
leisurely through his pockets for his match-box.  From outside came the
lazy cry of a vendor of lottery tickets, and the swift, uneven patter
of bare feet, as company after company of dust-covered soldiers passed
on their way from the provinces, with their shoes swinging from their
bayonets.

Clay slapped the table with an exclamation of impatience.

"After all, this is only a matter of business," he said, "with all of
us.  What do you say, Burke, to taking a ride with me to Stuart's
rooms, and having a talk there with the President and Mr. Langham?
Langham has three millions sunk in these mines, and Alvarez has even
better reasons than that for wanting to hold his job.  What do you say?
That's better than going to jail. Tell us what they mean to do, and who
is to do it, and I'll let you name your own figure, and I'll guarantee
you that they'll meet it.  As long as you've no sentiment, you might as
well fight on the side that will pay best."

Burke opened his lips as though to speak, and then shut them again,
closely.  If the others thought that he was giving Clay's proposition a
second and more serious thought, he was quick to undeceive them.

"There ARE men in the business who do that sort of thing," he said.
"They sell arms to one man, and sell the fact that he's got them to the
deputy-marshals, and sell the story of how smart they've been to the
newspapers.  And they never make any more sales after that.  I'd look
pretty, wouldn't I, bringing stuff into this country, and getting paid
for it, and then telling you where it was hid, and everything else I
knew?  I've no sentiment, as you say, but I've got business instinct,
and that's not business.  No, I've told you enough, and if you think
I'm not safe at large, why I'm quite ready to take a ride with your
young friend here."

MacWilliams rose with alacrity, and beaming with pleasure at the
importance of the duty thrust upon him.

Burke smiled.  "The young 'un seems to like the job," he said.

"It's an honor to be associated with Captain Burke in any way," said
MacWilliams, as he followed him into a cab, while Stuart galloped off
before them in the direction of the cuartel.

"You wouldn't think so if you knew better," said Burke.  "My friends
have been watching us while we have been talking in there for the last
hour.  They're watching us now, and if I were to nod my head during
this ride, they'd throw you out into the street and set me free, if
they had to break the cab into kindling-wood while they were doing it."

MacWilliams changed his seat to the one opposite his prisoner, and
peered up and down the street in some anxiety.

"I suppose you know there's an answer to that, don't you?" he asked.
"Well, the answer is, that if you nod your head once, you lose the top
of it."

Burke gave an exclamation of disgust, and gazed at his zealous guardian
with an expression of trepidation and unconcealed disapproval.  "You're
not armed, are you?" he asked.

MacWilliams nodded.  "Why not?" he said; "these are rather heavy
weather times, just at present, thanks to you and your friends.  Why,
you seem rather afraid of fire-arms," he added, with the intolerance of
youth.

The Irish-American touched the young man on the knee, and lifted his
hat.  "My son," he said, "when your hair is as gray as that, and you
have been through six campaigns, you'll be brave enough to own that
you're afraid of fire-arms, too."



X

Clay and Langham left MacWilliams and Stuart to look after their
prisoner, and returned to the Palms, where they dined in state, and
made no reference, while the women were present, to the events of the
day.

The moon rose late that night, and as Hope watched it, from where she
sat at the dinner-table facing the open windows, she saw the figure of
a man standing outlined in silhouette upon the edge of the cliff.  He
was dressed in the uniform of a sailor, and the moonlight played along
the barrel of a rifle upon which he leaned, motionless and menacing,
like a sentry on a rampart.

Hope opened her lips to speak, and then closed them again, and smiled
with pleasurable excitement.  A moment later King, who sat on her
right, called one of the servants to his side and whispered some
instructions, pointing meanwhile at the wine upon the table.  And a
minute after, Hope saw the white figure of the servant cross the garden
and approach the sentinel.  She saw the sentry fling his gun sharply to
his hip, and then, after a moment's parley, toss it up to his shoulder
and disappear from sight among the plants of the garden.

The men did not leave the table with the ladies, as was their custom,
but remained in the dining-room, and drew their chairs closer together.

Mr. Langham would not believe that the downfall of the Government was
as imminent as the others believed it to be.  It was only after much
argument, and with great reluctance, that he had even allowed King to
arm half of his crew, and to place them on guard around the Palms.
Clay warned him that in the disorder that followed every successful
revolution, the homes of unpopular members of the Cabinet were often
burned, and that he feared, should Mendoza succeed, and Alvarez fall,
that the mob might possibly vent its victorious wrath on the Palms
because it was the home of the alien, who had, as they thought, robbed
the country of the iron mines.  Mr. Langham said he did not think the
people would tramp five miles into the country seeking vengeance.

There was an American man-of-war lying in the harbor of Truxillo, a
seaport of the republic that bounded Olancho on the south, and Clay was
in favor of sending to her captain by Weimer, the Consul, and asking
him to anchor off Valencia, to protect American interests.  The run
would take but a few hours, and the sight of the vessel's white hull in
the harbor would, he thought, have a salutary effect upon the
revolutionists.  But Mr. Langham said, firmly, that he would not ask
for help until he needed it.

"Well, I'm sorry," said Clay.  "I should very much like to have that
man-of-war here.  However, if you say no, we will try to get along
without her.  But, for the present, I think you had better imagine
yourself back in New York, and let us have an entirely free hand.
We've gone too far to drop out," he went on, laughing at the sight of
Mr. Langham's gloomy countenance. "We've got to fight them now.  It's
against human nature not to do it."

Mr. Langham looked appealingly at his son and at King.

They both smiled back at him in unanimous disapproval of his policy of
non-interference.

"Oh, very well," he said, at last.  "You gentlemen can go ahead, kill,
burn, and destroy if you wish.  But, considering the fact that it is my
property you are all fighting about, I really think I might have
something to say in the matter."  Mr. Langham gazed about him
helplessly, and shook his head.

"My doctor sends me down here from a quiet, happy home," he protested,
with humorous pathos, "that I may rest and get away from excitement,
and here I am with armed men patrolling my garden-paths, with a lot of
filibusters plotting at my own dinner-table, and a civil war likely to
break out, entirely on my account.  And Dr. Winter told me this was the
only place that would cure my nervous prostration!"

Hope joined Clay as soon as the men left the dining-room, and beckoned
him to the farther end of the veranda.  "Well, what is it?" she said.

"What is what?" laughed Clay.  He seated himself on the rail of the
veranda, with his face to the avenue and the driveway leading to the
house.  They could hear the others from the back of the house, and the
voice of young Langham, who was giving an imitation of MacWilliams, and
singing with peculiar emphasis, "There is no place like Home, Sweet
Home."

"Why are the men guarding the Palms, and why did you go to the Plaza
Bolivar this morning at daybreak?  Alice says you left them there.  I
want to know what it means.  I am nearly as old as Ted, and he knows.
The men wouldn't tell me."

"What men?"

"King's men from the 'Vesta'.  I saw some of them dodging around in the
bushes, and I went to find out what they were doing, and I walked into
fifteen of them at your office.  They have hammocks swung all over the
veranda, and a quick-firing gun made fast to the steps, and muskets
stacked all about, just like real soldiers, but they wouldn't tell me
why."

"We'll put you in the carcel," said Clay, "if you go spying on our
forces.  Your father doesn't wish you to know anything about it, but,
since you have found it out for yourself, you might as well know what
little there is to know.  It's the same story. Mendoza is getting ready
to start his revolution, or, rather, he has started it."

"Why don't you stop him?" asked Hope.

"You are very flattering," said Clay.  "Even if I could stop him, it's
not my business to do it as yet.  I have to wait until he interferes
with me, or my mines, or my workmen.  Alvarez is the man who should
stop him, but he is afraid.  We cannot do anything until he makes the
first move.  If I were the President, I'd have Mendoza shot to-morrow
morning and declare martial law. Then I'd arrest everybody I didn't
like, and levy forced loans on all the merchants, and sail away to
Paris and live happy ever after.  That's what Mendoza would do if he
caught any one plotting against him.  And that's what Alvarez should
do, too, according to his lights, if he had the courage of his
convictions, and of his education.  I like to see a man play his part
properly, don't you?  If you are an emperor, you ought to conduct
yourself like one, as our German friend does.  Or if you are a
prize-fighter, you ought to be a human bulldog. There's no such thing
as a gentlemanly pugilist, any more than there can be a virtuous
burglar.  And if you're a South American Dictator, you can't afford to
be squeamish about throwing your enemies into jail or shooting them for
treason.  The way to dictate is to dictate,--not to hide indoors all
day while your wife plots for you."

"Does she do that?" asked Hope.  "And do you think she will be in
danger--any personal danger, if the revolution comes?"

"Well, she is very unpopular," Clay answered, "and unjustly so, I
think.  But it would be better, perhaps, for her if she went as quietly
as possible, when she does go."

"Is our Captain Stuart in danger, too?" the girl continued, anxiously.
"Alice says they put up placards about him all over the city last
night.  She saw his men tearing them down as she was coming home.  What
has he done?"

"Nothing," Clay answered, shortly.  "He happens to be in a false
position, that's all.  They think he is here because he is not wanted
in his own country; that is not so.  That is not the reason he remains
here.  When he was even younger than he is now, he was wild and
foolish, and spent more money than he could afford, and lent more money
to his brother-officers, I have no doubt, than they ever paid back.  He
had to leave the regiment because his father wouldn't pay his debts,
and he has been selling his sword for the last three years to one or
another king or sultan or party all over the world, in China and
Madagascar, and later in Siam.  I hope you will be very kind to Stuart
and believe well of him, and that you will listen to no evil against
him.  Somewhere in England Stuart has a sister like you--about your
age, I mean, that loves him very dearly, and a father whose heart aches
for him, and there is a certain royal regiment that still drinks his
health with pride.  He is a lonely little chap, and he has no sense of
humor to help him out of his difficulties, but he is a very brave
gentleman.  And he is here fighting for men who are not worthy to hold
his horse's bridle, because of a woman.  And I tell you this because
you will hear many lies about him--and about her.  He serves her with
the same sort of chivalric devotion that his ancestors felt for the
woman whose ribbons they tied to their lances, and for whom they fought
in the lists."

"I understand," Hope said, softly.  "I am glad you told me.  I shall
not forget."  She sighed and shook her head.  "I wish they'd let you
manage it for them," she said.

Clay laughed.  "I fear my executive ability is not of so high an order;
besides, as I haven't been born to it, my conscience might trouble me
if I had to shoot my enemies and rob the worthy merchants.  I had
better stick to digging holes in the ground. That is all I seem to be
good for."

Hope looked up at him, quickly, in surprise.

"What do you mean by that?" she demanded.  There was a tone of such
sharp reproach in her voice that Clay felt himself put on the defensive.

"I mean nothing by it," he said.  "Your sister and I had a talk the
other day about a man's making the best of himself, and it opened my
eyes to--to many things.  It was a very healthy lesson."

"It could not have been a very healthy lesson," Hope replied, severely,
"if it makes you speak of your work slightingly, as you did then.  That
didn't sound at all natural, or like you.  It sounded like Alice.  Tell
me, did Alice say that?"

The pleasure of hearing Hope take his part against himself was so
comforting to Clay that he hesitated in answering in order to enjoy it
the longer.  Her enthusiasm touched him deeply, and he wondered if she
were enthusiastic because she was young, or because she was sure she
was right, and that he was in the wrong.

"It started this way," Clay began, carefully.  He was anxious to be
quite fair to Miss Langham, but he found it difficult to give her point
of view correctly, while he was hungering for a word that would
re-establish him in his own good opinion.  "Your sister said she did
not think very much of what I had done, but she explained kindly that
she hoped for better things from me. But what troubles me is, that I
will never do anything much better or very different in kind from the
work I have done lately, and so I am a bit discouraged about it in
consequence. You see," said Clay, "when I come to die, and they ask me
what I have done with my ten fingers, I suppose I will have to say,
'Well, I built such and such railroads, and I dug up so many tons of
ore, and opened new countries, and helped make other men rich.'  I
can't urge in my behalf that I happen to have been so fortunate as to
have gained the good-will of yourself or your sister.  That is quite
reason enough to me, perhaps, for having lived, but it might not appeal
to them.  I want to feel that I have accomplished something outside of
myself--something that will remain after I go.  Even if it is only a
breakwater or a patent coupling.  When I am dead it will not matter to
any one what I personally was, whether I was a bore or a most charming
companion, or whether I had red hair or blue.  It is the work that will
tell.  And when your sister, whose judgment is the judgment of the
outside world, more or less, says that the work is not worth while, I
naturally feel a bit discouraged.  It meant so much to me, and it hurt
me to find it meant so little to others."

Hope remained silent for some time, but the rigidity of her attitude,
and the tightness with which she pressed her lips together, showed that
her mind was deeply occupied.  They both sat silent for some few
moments, looking down toward the distant lights of the city.  At the
farther end of the double row of bushes that lined the avenue they
could see one of King's sentries passing to and fro across the roadway,
a long black shadow on the moonlit road.

"You are very unfair to yourself," the girl said at last, "and Alice
does not represent the opinion of the world, only of a very small part
of it--her own little world.  She does not know how little it is.  And
you are wrong as to what they will ask you at the end.  What will they
care whether you built railroads or painted impressionist pictures?
They will ask you 'What have you made of yourself?  Have you been fine,
and strong, and sincere?' That is what they will ask.  And we like you
because you are all of these things, and because you look at life so
cheerfully, and are unafraid.  We do not like men because they build
railroads, or because they are prime ministers.  We like them for what
they are themselves.  And as to your work!" Hope added, and then paused
in eloquent silence.  "I think it is a grand work, and a noble work,
full of hardships and self-sacrifices.  I do not know of any man who
has done more with his life than you have done with yours."  She
stopped and controlled her voice before she spoke again.  "You should
be very proud," she said.

Clay lowered his eyes and sat silent, looking down the roadway. The
thought that the girl felt what she said so deeply, and that the fact
that she had said it meant more to him than anything else in the world
could mean, left him thrilled and trembling. He wanted to reach out his
hand and seize both of hers, and tell her how much she was to him, but
it seemed like taking advantage of the truths of a confessional, or of
a child's innocent confidences.

"No, Miss Hope," he answered, with an effort to speak lightly, "I wish
I could believe you, but I know myself better than any one else can,
and I know that while my bridges may stand examination--_I_ can't."

Hope turned and looked at him with eyes full of such sweet meaning that
he was forced to turn his own away.

"I could trust both, I think," the girl said.

Clay drew a quick, deep breath, and started to his feet, as though he
had thrown off the restraint under which he had held himself.

It was not a girl, but a woman who had spoken then, but, though he
turned eagerly toward her, he stood with his head bowed, and did not
dare to read the verdict in her eyes.

The clatter of horses' hoofs coming toward them at a gallop broke in
rudely upon the tense stillness of the moment, but neither noticed it.
"How far," Clay began, in a strained voice, "how far," he asked, more
steadily, "could you trust me?"

Hope's eyes had closed for an instant, and opened again, and she smiled
upon him with a look of perfect confidence and content. The beat of the
horses' hoofs came now from the end of the driveway, and they could
hear the men at the rear of the house pushing back their chairs and
hurrying toward them.  Hope raised her head, and Clay moved toward her
eagerly.  The horses were within a hundred yards.  Before Hope could
speak, the sentry's voice rang out in a hoarse, sharp challenge, like
an alarm of fire on the silent night.  "Halt!" they heard him cry. And
as the horses tore past him, and their riders did not turn to look, he
shouted again, "Halt, damn you!" and fired.  The flash showed a splash
of red and yellow in the moonlight, and the report started into life
hundreds of echoes which carried it far out over the waters of the
harbor, and tossed it into sharp angles, and distant corners, and in an
instant a myriad of sounds answered it; the frightened cry of
night-birds, the barking of dogs in the village below, and the
footsteps of men running.

Clay glanced angrily down the avenue, and turned beseechingly to Hope.

"Go," she said.  "See what is wrong," and moved away as though she
already felt that he could act more freely when she was not near him.

The two horses fell back on their haunches before the steps, and
MacWilliams and Stuart tumbled out of their saddles, and started,
running back on foot in the direction from which the shot had come,
tugging at their revolvers.

"Come back," Clay shouted to them.  "That's all right.  He was only
obeying orders.  That's one of King's sentries."

"Oh, is that it?" said Stuart, in matter-of-fact tones, as he turned
again to the house.  "Good idea.  Tell him to fire lower next time.
And, I say," he went on, as he bowed curtly to the assembled company on
the veranda, "since you have got a picket out, you had better double
it.  And, Clay, see that no one leaves here without permission--no one.
That's more important, even, than keeping them out."

"King, will you--" Clay began.

"All right, General," laughed King, and walked away to meet his
sailors, who came running up the hill in great anxiety.

MacWilliams had not opened his lips, but he was bristling with
importance, and his effort to appear calm and soldierly, like Stuart,
told more plainly than speech that he was the bearer of some invaluable
secret.  The sight filled young Langham with a disquieting fear that he
had missed something.

Stuart looked about him, and pulled briskly at his gauntlets. King and
his sailors were grouped together on the grass before the house.  Mr.
Langham and his daughters, and Clay, were standing on the steps, and
the servants were peering around the corners of the house.

Stuart saluted Mr. Langham, as though to attract his especial
attention, and then addressed himself in a low tone to Clay.

"It's come," he said.  "We've been in it since dinner-time, and we've
got a whole night's work cut out for you."  He was laughing with
excitement, and paused for a moment to gain breath.  "I'll tell you the
worst of it first.  Mendoza has sent word to Alvarez that he wants the
men at the mines to be present at the review to-morrow.  He says they
must take part.  He wrote a most insolent letter.  Alvarez got out of
it by saying that the men were under contract to you, and that you must
give your permission first.  Mendoza sent me word that if you would not
let the men come, he would go out and fetch them in him self."

"Indeed!" growled Clay.  "Kirkland needs those men to-morrow to load
ore-cars for Thursday's steamer.  He can't spare them. That is our
answer, and it happens to be a true one, but if it weren't true, if
to-morrow was All Saints' Day, and the men had nothing to do but to lie
in the sun and sleep, Mendoza couldn't get them.  And if he comes to
take them to-morrow, he'll have to bring his army with him to do it.
And he couldn't do it then, Mr. Langham," Clay cried, turning to that
gentleman, "if I had better weapons.  The five thousand dollars I
wanted you to spend on rifles, sir, two months ago, might have saved
you several millions to-morrow."

Clay's words seemed to bear some special significance to Stuart and
MacWilliams, for they both laughed, and Stuart pushed Clay up the steps
before him.

"Come inside," he said.  "That is why we are here. MacWilliams has
found out where Burke hid his shipment of arms. We are going to try and
get them to-night."  He hurried into the dining-room, and the others
grouped themselves about the table. "Tell them about it, MacWilliams,"
Stuart commanded.  "I will see that no one overhears you."

MacWilliams was pushed into Mr. Langham's place at the head of the long
table, and the others dragged their chairs up close around him.  King
put the candles at the opposite end of the table, and set some
decanters and glasses in the centre.  "To look as though we were just
enjoying ourselves," he explained, pleasantly.

Mr. Langham, with his fine, delicate fingers beating nervously on the
table, observed the scene as an on-looker, rather than as the person
chiefly interested.  He smiled as he appreciated the incongruity of the
tableau, and the contrast which the actors presented to the situation.
He imagined how much it would amuse his contemporaries of the Union
Club, at home, if they could see him then, with the still, tropical
night outside, the candles reflected on the polished table and on the
angles of the decanters, and showing the intent faces of the young
girls and the men leaning eagerly forward around MacWilliams, who sat
conscious and embarrassed, his hair dishevelled, and his face covered
with dust, while Stuart paced up and down in the shadow, his sabre
clanking as he walked.

"Well, it happened like this," MacWilliams began, nervously, and
addressing himself to Clay.  "Stuart and I put Burke safely in a cell
by himself.  It was one of the old ones that face the street.  There
was a narrow window in it, about eight feet above the floor, and no
means of his reaching it, even if he stood on a chair.  We stationed
two troopers before the door, and sent out to a caf; across the street
for our dinners.  I finished mine about nine o'clock, and said 'Good
night' to Stuart, and started to come out here. I went across the
street first, however, to give the restaurant man some orders about
Burke's breakfast.  It is a narrow street, you know, with a long
garden-wall and a row of little shops on one side, and with the
jail-wall taking up all of the other side.  The street was empty when I
left the jail, except for the sentry on guard in front of it, but just
as I was leaving the restaurant I saw one of Stuart's police come out
and peer up and down the street and over at the shops.  He looked
frightened and anxious, and as I wasn't taking chances on anything, I
stepped back into the restaurant and watched him through the window.
He waited until the sentry had turned his back, and started away from
him on his post, and then I saw him drop his sabre so that it rang on
the sidewalk.  He was standing, I noticed then, directly under the
third window from the door of the jail.  That was the window of Burke's
cell.  When I grasped that fact I got out my gun and walked to the door
of the restaurant.  Just as I reached it a piece of paper shot out
through the bars of Burke's cell and fell at the policeman's feet, and
he stamped his boot down on it and looked all around again to see if
any one had noticed him.  I thought that was my cue, and I ran across
the street with my gun pointed, and shouted to him to give me the
paper.  He jumped about a foot when he first saw me, but he was game,
for he grabbed up the paper and stuck it in his mouth and began to chew
on it.  I was right up on him then, and I hit him on the chin with my
left fist and knocked him down against the wall, and dropped on him
with both knees and choked him till I made him spit out the paper--and
two teeth," MacWilliams added, with a conscientious regard for details.
"The sentry turned just then and came at me with his bayonet, but I put
my finger to my lips, and that surprised him, so that he didn't know
just what to do, and hesitated.  You see, I didn't want Burke to hear
the row outside, so I grabbed my policeman by the collar and pointed to
the jail-door, and the sentry ran back and brought out Stuart and the
guard.  Stuart was pretty mad when he saw his policeman all bloody.  He
thought it would prejudice his other men against us, but I explained
out loud that the man had been insolent, and I asked Stuart to take us
both to his private room for a hearing, and, of course, when I told him
what had happened, he wanted to punch the chap, too.  We put him
ourselves into a cell where he could not communicate with any one, and
then we read the paper.  Stuart has it," said MacWilliams, pushing back
his chair, "and he'll tell you the rest."  There was a pause, in which
every one seemed to take time to breathe, and then a chorus of
questions and explanations.

King lifted his glass to MacWilliams, and nodded.

"'Well done, Condor,'" he quoted, smiling.

"Yes," said Clay, tapping the younger man on the shoulder as he passed
him.  "That's good work.  Now show us the paper, Stuart."

Stuart pulled the candles toward him, and spread a slip of paper on the
table.

"Burke did this up in one of those paper boxes for wax matches," he
explained, "and weighted it with a twenty-dollar gold piece.
MacWilliams kept the gold piece, I believe."

"Going to use it for a scarf-pin," explained MacWilliams, in
parenthesis.  "Sort of war-medal, like the Chief's," he added, smiling.

"This is in Spanish," Stuart explained.  "I will translate it. It is
not addressed to any one, and it is not signed, but it was evidently
written to Mendoza, and we know it is in Burke's handwriting, for we
compared it with some notes of his that we took from him before he was
locked up.  He says, 'I cannot keep the appointment, as I have been
arrested.'  The line that follows here," Stuart explained, raising his
head, "has been scratched out, but we spent some time over it, and we
made out that it read:  'It was Mr. Clay who recognized me, and ordered
my arrest. He is the best man the others have.  Watch him.'  We think
he rubbed that out through good feeling toward Clay.  There seems to be
no other reason.  He's a very good sort, this old Burke, I think."

"Well, never mind him; it was very decent of him, anyway," said Clay.
"Go on.  Get to Hecuba."

"'I cannot keep the appointment, as I have been arrested,'" repeated
Stuart.  "'I landed the goods last night in safety.  I could not come
in when first signalled, as the wind and tide were both off shore.  But
we got all the stuff stored away by morning.  Your agent paid me in
full and got my receipt. Please consider this as the same thing--as the
equivalent'--it is difficult to translate it exactly," commented
Stuart--"'as the equivalent of the receipt I was to have given when I
made my report to-night.  I sent three of your guards away on my own
responsibility, for I think more than that number might attract
attention to the spot, and they might be seen from the ore-trains.'
That is the point of the note for us, of course," Stuart interrupted
himself to say.  "Burke adds," he went on, "'that they are to make no
effort to rescue him, as he is quite comfortable, and is willing to
remain in the carcel until they are established in power.'"

"Within sight of the ore-trains!" exclaimed Clay.  "There are no
ore-trains but ours.  It must be along the line of the road."

"MacWilliams says he knows every foot of land along the railroad," said
Stuart, "and he is sure the place Burke means is the old fortress on
the Platta inlet, because--"

"It is the only place," interrupted MacWilliams, "where there is no
surf.  They could run small boats up the inlet and unload in smooth
water within twenty feet of the ramparts; and another thing, that is
the only point on the line with a wagon road running direct from it to
the Capital.  It's an old road, and hasn't been travelled over for
years, but it could be used. No," he added, as though answering the
doubt in Clay's mind, "there is no other place.  If I had a map here I
could show you in a minute; where the beach is level there is a jungle
between it and the road, and wherever there is open country, there is a
limestone formation and rocks between it and the sea, where no boat
could touch."

"But the fortress is so conspicuous," Clay demurred; "the nearest
rampart is within twenty feet of the road.  Don't you remember we
measured it when we thought of laying the double track?"

"That is just what Burke says," urged Stuart.  "That is the reason he
gives for leaving only three men on guard--'I think more than that
number might attract attention to the spot, as they might be seen from
the ore-trains.'"

"Have you told any one of this?" Clay asked.  "What have you done so
far?"

"We've done nothing," said Stuart.  "We lost our nerve when we found
out how much we knew, and we decided we'd better leave it to you."

"Whatever we do must be done at once," said Clay.  "They will come for
the arms to-night, most likely, and we must be there first.  I agree
with you entirely about the place.  It is only a question now of our
being on time.  There are two things to do.  The first thing is, to
keep them from getting the arms, and the second is, if we are lucky, to
secure them for ourselves. If we can pull it off properly, we ought to
have those rifles in the mines before midnight.  If we are hurried or
surprised, we must dump them off the fort into the sea."  Clay laughed
and looked about him at the men.  "We are only following out General
Bolivar's saying 'When you want arms take them from the enemy.' Now,
there are three places we must cover.  This house, first of all," he
went on, inclining his head quickly toward the two sisters, "then the
city, and the mines.  Stuart's place, of course, is at the Palace.
King must take care of this house and those in it, and MacWilliams and
Langham and I must look after the arms.  We must organize two parties,
and they had better approach the fort from here and from the mines at
the same time. I will need you to do some telegraphing for me, Mac;
and, King, I must ask you for some more men from the yacht.  How many
have you?"

King answered that there were fifteen men still on board, ten of whom
would be of service.  He added that they were all well equipped for
fighting.

"I believe King's a pirate in business hours," Clay said, smiling.
"All right, that's good.  Now go tell ten of them to meet me at the
round-house in half an hour.  I will get MacWilliams to telegraph
Kirkland to run an engine and flat cars to within a half mile of the
fort on the north, and we will come up on it with the sailors and Ted,
here, from the south.  You must run the engine yourself, MacWilliams,
and perhaps it would be better, King, if your men joined us at the foot
of the grounds here and not at the round-house.  None of the workmen
must see our party start.  Do you agree with me?" he asked, turning to
those in the group about him.  "Has anybody any criticism to make?"

Stuart and King looked at one another ruefully and laughed.  "I don't
see what good I am doing in town," protested Stuart. "Yes, and I don't
see where I come in, either," growled King, in aggrieved tones.  "These
youngsters can't do it all; besides I ought to have charge of my own
men."

"Mutiny," said Clay, in some perplexity, "rank mutiny.  Why, it's only
a picnic.  There are but three men there.  We don't need sixteen white
men to frighten off three Olanchoans."

"I'll tell you what to do," cried Hope, with the air of having
discovered a plan which would be acceptable to every one, "let's all
go."

"Well, I certainly mean to go," said Mr. Langham, decidedly.  "So some
one else must stay here.  Ted, you will have to look after your
sisters."

The son and heir smiled upon his parent with a look of affectionate
wonder, and shook his head at him in fond and pitying disapproval.

"I'll stay," said King.  "I have never seen such ungallant conduct.
Ladies," he said, "I will protect your lives and property, and we'll
invent something exciting to do ourselves, even if we have to bombard
the Capital."

The men bade the women good-night, and left them with King and Mr.
Langham, who had been persuaded to remain overnight, while Stuart rode
off to acquaint Alvarez and General Rojas with what was going on.



XI

There was no chance for Clay to speak to Hope again, though he felt the
cruelty of having to leave her with everything between them in this
interrupted state.  But their friends stood about her, interested and
excited over this expedition of smuggled arms, unconscious of the great
miracle that had come into his life and of his need to speak to and to
touch the woman who had wrought it.  Clay felt how much more binding
than the laws of life are the little social conventions that must be
observed at times, even though the heart is leaping with joy or racked
with sorrow.  He stood within a few feet of the woman he loved, wanting
to cry out at her and to tell her all the wonderful things which he had
learned were true for the first time that night, but he was forced
instead to keep his eyes away from her face and to laugh and answer
questions, and at the last to go away content with having held her hand
for an instant, and to have heard her say "good-luck."

MacWilliams called Kirkland to the office at the other end of the
Company's wire, and explained the situation to him.  He was instructed
to run an engine and freight-cars to a point a quarter of a mile north
of the fort, and to wait there until he heard a locomotive whistle or
pistol shots, when he was to run on to the fort as quickly and as
noiselessly as possible.  He was also directed to bring with him as
many of the American workmen as he could trust to keep silent
concerning the events of the evening.  At ten o'clock MacWilliams had
the steam up in a locomotive, and with his only passenger-car in the
rear, ran it out of the yard and stopped the train at the point nearest
the cars where ten of the 'Vesta's' crew were waiting.  The sailors had
no idea as to where they were going, or what they were to do, but the
fact that they had all been given arms filled them with satisfaction,
and they huddled together at the bottom of the car smoking and
whispering, and radiant with excitement and satisfaction.

The train progressed cautiously until it was within a half mile below
the fort, when Clay stopped it, and, leaving two men on guard, stepped
off the remaining distance on the ties, his little band following
noiselessly behind him like a procession of ghosts in the moonlight.
They halted and listened from time to time as they drew near the ruins,
but there was no sound except the beating of the waves on the rocks and
the rustling of the sea-breeze through the vines and creepers about
them.

Clay motioned to the men to sit down, and, beckoning to MacWilliams,
directed him to go on ahead and reconnoitre.

"If you fire we will come up," he said.  "Get back here as soon as you
can."

"Aren't you going to make sure first that Kirkland is on the other side
of the fort?" MacWilliams whispered.

Clay replied that he was certain Kirkland had already arrived. "He had
a shorter run than ours, and he wired you he was ready to start when we
were, didn't he?" MacWilliams nodded.

"Well, then, he is there.  I can count on Kirk."

MacWilliams pulled at his heavy boots and hid them in the bushes, with
his helmet over them to mark the spot.  "I feel as though I was going
to rob a bank," he chuckled, as he waved his hand and crept off into
the underbrush.

For the first few moments the men who were left behind sat silent, but
as the minutes wore on, and MacWilliams made no sign, they grew
restless, and shifted their positions, and began to whisper together,
until Clay shook his head at them, and there was silence again until
one of them, in trying not to cough, almost strangled, and the others
tittered and those nearest pummelled him on the back.

Clay pulled out his revolver, and after spinning the cylinder under his
finger-nail, put it back in its holder again, and the men, taking this
as an encouraging promise of immediate action, began to examine their
weapons again for the twentieth time, and there was a chorus of short,
muffled clicks as triggers were drawn back and cautiously lowered and
levers shot into place and caught again.

One of the men farthest down the track raised his arm, and all turned
and half rose as they saw MacWilliams coming toward them on a run,
leaping noiselessly in his stocking feet from tie to tie.  He dropped
on his knees between Clay and Langham.

"The guns are there all right," he whispered, panting, "and there are
only three men guarding them.  They are all sitting on the beach
smoking.  I hustled around the fort and came across the whole outfit in
the second gallery.  It looks like a row of coffins, ten coffins and
about twenty little boxes and kegs.  I'm sure that means they are
coming for them to-night.  They've not tried to hide them nor to cover
them up.  All we've got to do is to walk down on the guards and tell
them to throw up their hands. It's too easy."

Clay jumped to his feet.  "Come on," he said.

"Wait till I get my boots on first," begged MacWilliams.  "I wouldn't
go over those cinders again in my bare feet for all the buried treasure
in the Spanish Main.  You can make all the noise you want; the waves
will drown it."

With MacWilliams to show them the way, the men scrambled up the outer
wall of the fort and crossed the moss-covered ramparts at the run.
Below them, on the sandy beach, were three men sitting around a
driftwood fire that had sunk to a few hot ashes.  Clay nodded to
MacWilliams.  "You and Ted can have them," he said. "Go with him,
Langham."

The sailors levelled their rifles at the three lonely figures on the
beach as the two boys slipped down the wall and fell on their hands and
feet in the sand below, and then crawled up to within a few feet of
where the men were sitting.

As MacWilliams raised his revolver one of the three, who was cooking
something over the fire, raised his head and with a yell of warning
flung himself toward his rifle.

"Up with your hands!" MacWilliams shouted in Spanish, and Langham,
running in, seized the nearest sentry by the neck and shoved his face
down between his knees into the sand.

There was a great rattle of falling stones and of breaking vines as the
sailors tumbled down the side of the fort, and in a half minute's time
the three sentries were looking with angry, frightened eyes at the
circle of armed men around them.

"Now gag them," said Clay.  "Does anybody here know how to gag a man?"
he asked.  "I don't."

"Better make him tell what he knows first," suggested Langham.

But the Spaniards were too terrified at what they had done, or at what
they had failed to do, to further commit themselves.

"Tie us and gag us," one of them begged.  "Let them find us so.  It is
the kindest thing you can do for us."

"Thank you, sir," said Clay.  "That is what I wanted to know. They are
coming to-night, then.  We must hurry."

The three sentries were bound and hidden at the base of the wall, with
a sailor to watch them.  He was a young man with a high sense of the
importance of his duties, and he enlivened the prisoners by poking them
in the ribs whenever they moved.

Clay deemed it impossible to signal Kirkland as they had arranged to
do, as they could not know now how near those who were coming for the
arms might be.  So MacWilliams was sent back for his engine, and a few
minutes later they heard it rumble heavily past the fort on its way to
bring up Kirkland and the flat cars.  Clay explored the lower chambers
of the fort and found the boxes as MacWilliams had described them.  Ten
men, with some effort, could lift and carry the larger coffin-shaped
boxes, and Clay guessed that, granting their contents to be rifles,
there must be a hundred pieces in each box, and that there were a
thousand rifles in all.

They had moved half of the boxes to the side of the track when the
train of flat cars and the two engines came crawling and twisting
toward them, between the walls of the jungle, like a great serpent,
with no light about it but the glow from the hot ashes as they fell
between the rails.  Thirty men, equally divided between Irish and
negroes, fell off the flat cars before the wheels had ceased to
revolve, and, without a word of direction, began loading the heavy
boxes on the train and passing the kegs of cartridges from hand to hand
and shoulder to shoulder.  The sailors spread out up the road that led
to the Capital to give warning in case the enemy approached, but they
were recalled before they had reason to give an alarm, and in a half
hour Burke's entire shipment of arms was on the ore-cars, the men who
were to have guarded them were prisoners in the cab of the engine, and
both trains were rushing at full speed toward the mines.  On arriving
there Kirkland's train was switched to the siding that led to the
magazine in which was stored the rack-arock and dynamite used in the
blasting.  By midnight all of the boxes were safely under lock in the
zinc building, and the number of the men who always guarded the place
for fear of fire or accident was doubled, while a reserve, composed of
Kirkland's thirty picked men, were hidden in the surrounding houses and
engine-sheds.

Before Clay left he had one of the boxes broken open, and found that it
held a hundred Mannlicher rifles.

"Good!" he said.  "I'd give a thousand dollars in gold if I could bring
Mendoza out here and show him his own men armed with his own
Mannlichers and dying for a shot at him.  How old Burke will enjoy this
when he hears of it!"

The party from the Palms returned to their engine after many promises
of reward to the men for their work "over-time," and were soon flying
back with their hearts as light as the smoke above them.

MacWilliams slackened speed as they neared the fort, and moved up
cautiously on the scene of their recent victory, but a warning cry from
Clay made him bring his engine to a sharp stop. Many lights were
flashing over the ruins and they could see in their reflection the
figures of men running over the same walls on which the lizards had
basked in undisturbed peace for years.

"They look like a swarm of hornets after some one has chucked a stone
through their nest," laughed MacWilliams.  "What shall we do now?  Go
back, or wait here, or run the blockade?"

"Oh, ride them out," said Langham; "the family's anxious, and I want to
tell them what's happened.  Go ahead."

Clay turned to the sailors in the car behind them.  "Lie down, men," he
said.  "And don't any of you fire unless I tell you to.  Let them do
all the shooting.  This isn't our fight yet, and, besides, they can't
hit a locomotive standing still, certainly not when it's going at full
speed."

"Suppose they've torn the track up?" said MacWilliams, grinning.  "We'd
look sort of silly flying through the air."

"Oh, they've not sense enough to think of that," said Clay. "Besides,
they don't know it was we who took their arms away, yet."

MacWilliams opened the throttle gently, and the train moved slowly
forward, gaining speed at each revolution of the wheels.

As the noise of its approach beat louder and louder on the air, a yell
of disappointed rage and execration rose into the night from the fort,
and a mass of soldiers swarmed upon the track, leaping up and down and
shaking the rifles in their hands.

"That sounds a little as though they thought we had something to do
with it," said MacWilliams, grimly.  "If they don't look out some one
will get hurt."

There was a flash of fire from where the mass of men stood, followed by
a dozen more flashes, and the bullets rattled on the smokestack and
upon the boiler of the engine.

"Low bridge," cried MacWilliams, with a fierce chuckle.  "Now, watch
her!"

He threw open the throttle as far as it would go, and the engine
answered to his touch like a race-horse to the whip.  It seemed to
spring from the track into the air.  It quivered and shook like a live
thing, and as it shot in between the soldiers they fell back on either
side, and MacWilliams leaned far out of his cab-window shaking his fist
at them.

"You got left, didn't you?" he shouted.  "Thank you for the
Mannlichers."

As the locomotive rushed out of the jungle, and passed the point on the
road nearest to the Palms, MacWilliams loosened three long triumphant
shrieks from his whistle and the sailors stood up and cheered.

"Let them shout," cried Clay.  "Everybody will have to know now.  It's
begun at last," he said, with a laugh of relief.

"And we took the first trick," said MacWilliams, as he ran his engine
slowly into the railroad yard.

The whistles of the engine and the shouts of the sailors had carried
far through the silence of the night, and as the men came hurrying
across the lawn to the Palms, they saw all of those who had been left
behind grouped on the veranda awaiting them.

"Do the conquering heroes come?" shouted King.

"They do," young Langham cried, joyously.  "We've got all their arms,
and they shot at us.  We've been under fire!"

"Are any of you hurt?" asked Miss Langham, anxiously, as she and the
others hurried down the steps to welcome them, while those of the
'Vesta's' crew who had been left behind looked at their comrades with
envy.

"We have been so frightened and anxious about you," said Miss Langham.

Hope held out her hand to Clay and greeted him with a quiet, happy
smile, that was in contrast to the excitement and confusion that
reigned about them.

"I knew you would come back safely," she said.  And the pressure of her
hand seemed to add "to me."



XII

The day of the review rose clear and warm, tempered by a light breeze
from the sea.  As it was a fete day, the harbor wore an air of unwonted
inactivity; no lighters passed heavily from the levees to the
merchantmen at anchor, and the warehouses along the wharves were closed
and deserted.  A thin line of smoke from the funnels of the 'Vesta'
showed that her fires were burning, and the fact that she rode on a
single anchor chain seemed to promise that at any moment she might slip
away to sea.

As Clay was finishing his coffee two notes were brought to him from
messengers who had ridden out that morning, and who sat in their
saddles looking at the armed force around the office with amused
intelligence.

One note was from Mendoza, and said he had decided not to call out the
regiment at the mines, as he feared their long absence from drill would
make them compare unfavorably with their comrades, and do him more harm
than credit.  "He is afraid of them since last night," was Clay's
comment, as he passed the note on to MacWilliams.  "He's quite right,
they might do him harm."

The second note was from Stuart.  He said the city was already wide
awake and restless, but whether this was due to the fact that it was a
fete day, or to some other cause which would disclose itself later, he
could not tell.  Madame Alvarez, the afternoon before, while riding in
the Alameda, had been insulted by a group of men around a caf;, who had
risen and shouted after her, one of them throwing a wine-glass into her
lap as she rode past.  His troopers had charged the sidewalk and
carried off six of the men to the carcel.  He and Rojas had urged the
President to make every preparation for immediate flight, to have the
horses put to his travelling carriage, and had warned him when at the
review to take up his position at the point nearest to his own
body-guard, and as far as possible from the troops led by Mendoza.
Stuart added that he had absolute confidence in the former.  The
policeman who had attempted to carry Burke's note to Mendoza had
confessed that he was the only traitor in the camp, and that he had
tried to work on his comrades without success. Stuart begged Clay to
join him as quickly as possible.  Clay went up the hill to the Palms,
and after consulting with Mr. Langham, dictated an order to Kirkland,
instructing him to call the men together and to point out to them how
much better their condition had been since they had entered the mines,
and to promise them an increase of wages if they remained faithful to
Mr. Langham's interests, and a small pension to any one who might be
injured "from any cause whatsoever" while serving him.

"Tell them, if they are loyal, they can live in their shacks rent free
hereafter," wrote Clay.  "They are always asking for that.  It's a
cheap generosity," he added aloud to Mr. Langham, "because we've never
been able to collect rent from any of them yet."

At noon young Langham ordered the best three horses in the stables to
be brought to the door of the Palms for Clay, MacWilliams, and himself.
Clay's last words to King were to have the yacht in readiness to put to
sea when he telephoned him to do so, and he advised the women to have
their dresses and more valuable possessions packed ready to be taken on
board.

"Don't you think I might see the review if I went on horseback?" Hope
asked.  "I could get away then, if there should be any trouble."

Clay answered with a look of such alarm and surprise that Hope laughed.

"See the review!  I should say not," he exclaimed.  "I don't even want
Ted to be there."

"Oh, that's always the way," said Hope, "I miss everything.  I think
I'll come, however, anyhow.  The servants are all going, and I'll go
with them disguised in a turban."

As the men neared Valencia, Clay turned in his saddle, and asked
Langham if he thought his sister would really venture into the town.

"She'd better not let me catch her, if she does," the fond brother
replied.

The reviewing party left the Government Palace for the Alameda at three
o'clock, President Alvarez riding on horseback in advance, and Madame
Alvarez sitting in the State carriage with one of her attendants, and
with Stuart's troopers gathered so closely about her that the men's
boots scraped against the wheels, and their numbers hid her almost
entirely from sight.

The great square in which the evolutions were to take place was lined
on its four sides by the carriages of the wealthy Olanchoans, except at
the two gates, where there was a wide space left open to admit the
soldiers.  The branches of the trees on the edges of the bare parade
ground were black with men and boys, and the balconies and roofs of the
houses that faced it were gay with streamers and flags, and alive with
women wrapped for the occasion in their colored shawls.  Seated on the
grass between the carriages, or surging up and down behind them, were
thousands of people, each hurrying to gain a better place of vantage,
or striving to hold the one he had, and forming a restless, turbulent
audience in which all individual cries were lost in a great murmur of
laughter, and calls, and cheers.  The mass knit together, and pressed
forward as the President's band swung jauntily into the square and
halted in one corner, and a shout of expectancy went up from the trees
and housetops as the President's body-guard entered at the lower gate,
and the broken place in its ranks showed that it was escorting the
State carriage.  The troopers fell back on two sides, and the carriage,
with the President riding at its head, passed on, and took up a
position in front of the other carriages, and close to one of the sides
of the hollow square.  At Stuart's orders Clay, MacWilliams, and
Langham had pushed their horses into the rear rank of cavalry, and
remained wedged between the troopers within twenty feet of where Madame
Alvarez was sitting.  She was very white, and the powder on her face
gave her an added and unnatural pallor.  As the people cheered her
husband and herself she raised her head slightly and seemed to be
trying to catch any sound of dissent in their greeting, or some
possible undercurrent of disfavor, but the welcome appeared to be both
genuine and hearty, until a second shout smothered it completely as the
figure of old General Rojas, the Vice-President, and the most dearly
loved by the common people, came through the gate at the head of his
regiment.  There was such greeting for him that the welcome to the
President seemed mean in comparison, and it was with an embarrassment
which both felt that the two men drew near together, and each leaned
from his saddle to grasp the other's hand.  Madame Alvarez sank back
rigidly on her cushions, and her eyes flashed with anticipation and
excitement.  She drew her mantilla a little closer about her shoulders,
with a nervous shudder as though she were cold.  Suddenly the look of
anxiety in her eyes changed to one of annoyance, and she beckoned Clay
imperiously to the side of the carriage.

"Look," she said, pointing across the square.  "If I am not mistaken
that is Miss Langham, Miss Hope.  The one on the black horse--it must
be she, for none of the native ladies ride.  It is not safe for her to
be here alone.  Go," she commanded, "bring her here to me.  Put her
next to the carriage, or perhaps she will be safer with you among the
troopers."

Clay had recognized Hope before Madame Alvarez had finished speaking,
and dashed off at a gallop, skirting the line of carriages.  Hope had
stopped her horse beside a victoria, and was talking to the native
women who occupied it, and who were scandalized at her appearance in a
public place with no one but a groom to attend her.

"Why, it's the same thing as a polo match," protested Hope, as Clay
pulled up angrily beside the victoria.  "I always ride over to polo
alone at Newport, at least with James," she added, nodding her head
toward the servant.

The man approached Clay and touched his hat apologetically, "Miss Hope
would come, sir," he said, "and I thought I'd better be with her than
to go off and tell Mr. Langham, sir.  I knew she wouldn't wait for me."

"I asked you not to come," Clay said to Hope, in a low voice.

"I wanted to know the worst at once," she answered.  "I was anxious
about Ted--and you."

"Well, it can't be helped now," he said.  "Come, we must hurry, here is
our friend, the enemy."  He bowed to their acquaintances in the
victoria and they trotted briskly off to the side of the President's
carriage, just as a yell arose from the crowd that made all the other
shouts which had preceded it sound like the cheers of children at
recess.

"It reminds me of a football match," whispered young Langham,
excitedly, "when the teams run on the field.  Look at Alvarez and Rojas
watching Mendoza."

Mendoza advanced at the front of his three troops of cavalry, looking
neither to the left nor right, and by no sign acknowledging the fierce
uproarious greeting of the people. Close behind him came his chosen
band of cowboys and ruffians. They were the best equipped and least
disciplined soldiers in the army, and were, to the great relief of the
people, seldom seen in the city, but were kept moving in the mountain
passes and along the coast line, on the lookout for smugglers with whom
they were on the most friendly terms.  They were a picturesque body of
blackguards, in their hightopped boots and silver-tipped sombreros and
heavy, gaudy saddles, but the shout that had gone up at their advance
was due as much to the fear they inspired as to any great love for them
or their chief.

"Now all the chessmen are on the board, and the game can begin," said
Clay.  "It's like the scene in the play, where each man has his sword
at another man's throat and no one dares make the first move."  He
smiled as he noted, with the eye of one who had seen Continental troops
in action, the shuffling steps and slovenly carriage of the half-grown
soldiers that followed Mendoza's cavalry at a quick step.  Stuart's
picked men, over whom he had spent many hot and weary hours, looked
like a troop of Life Guardsmen in comparison.  Clay noted their
superiority, but he also saw that in numbers they were most woefully at
a disadvantage.

It was a brilliant scene for so modest a capital.  The sun flashed on
the trappings of the soldiers, on the lacquer and polished metal work
of the carriages; and the Parisian gowns of their occupants and the
fluttering flags and banners filled the air with color and movement,
while back of all, framing the parade ground with a band of black, was
the restless mob of people applauding the evolutions, and cheering for
their favorites, Alvarez, Mendoza, and Rojas, moved by an excitement
that was in disturbing contrast to the easy good-nature of their usual
manner.

The marching and countermarching of the troops had continued with
spirit for some time, and there was a halt in the evolutions which left
the field vacant, except for the presence of Mendoza's cavalrymen, who
were moving at a walk along one side of the quadrangle.  Alvarez and
Vice-President Rojas, with Stuart, as an adjutant at their side, were
sitting their horses within some fifty yards of the State carriage and
the body-guard.  Alvarez made a conspicuous contrast in his black coat
and high hat to the brilliant greens and reds of his generals'
uniforms, but he sat his saddle as well as either of the others, and
his white hair, white imperial and mustache, and the dignity of his
bearing distinguished him above them both.  Little Stuart, sitting at
his side, with his blue eyes glaring from under his white helmet and
his face burned to almost as red a tint as his curly hair, looked like
a fierce little bull-dog in comparison.  None of the three men spoke as
they sat motionless and quite alone waiting for the next movement of
the troops.

It proved to be one of moment.  Even before Mendoza had ridden toward
them with his sword at salute, Clay gave an exclamation of
enlightenment and concern.  He saw that the men who were believed to be
devoted to Rojas, had been halted and left standing at the farthest
corner of the plaza, nearly two hundred yards from where the President
had taken his place, that Mendoza's infantry surrounded them on every
side, and that Mendoza's cowboys, who had been walking their horses,
had wheeled and were coming up with an increasing momentum, a flying
mass of horses and men directed straight at the President himself.

Mendoza galloped up to Alvarez with his sword still in salute. His eyes
were burning with excitement and with the light of success.  No one but
Stuart and Rojas heard his words; to the spectators and to the army he
appeared as though he was, in his capacity of Commander-in-Chief,
delivering some brief report, or asking for instructions.

"Dr. Alvarez," he said, "as the head of the army I arrest you for high
treason; you have plotted to place yourself in office without popular
election.  You are also accused of large thefts of public funds.  I
must ask you to ride with me to the military prison.  General Rojas, I
regret that as an accomplice of the President's, you must come with us
also.  I will explain my action to the people when you are safe in
prison, and I will proclaim martial law.  If your troops attempt to
interfere, my men have orders to fire on them and you."

Stuart did not wait for his sentence.  He had heard the heavy beat of
the cavalry coming up on them at a trot.  He saw the ranks open and two
men catch at each bridle rein of both Alvarez and Rojas and drag them
on with them, buried in the crush of horses about them, and swept
forward by the weight and impetus of the moving mass behind.  Stuart
dashed off to the State carriage and seized the nearest of the horses
by the bridle.  "To the Palace!" he shouted to his men.  "Shoot any one
who tries to stop you.  Forward, at a gallop," he commanded.

The populace had not discovered what had occurred until it was
finished.  The coup d'etat had been long considered and the manner in
which it was to be carried out carefully planned.  The cavalry had
swept across the parade ground and up the street before the people saw
that they carried Rojas and Alvarez with them.  The regiment commanded
by Rojas found itself hemmed in before and behind by Mendoza's two
regiments.  They were greatly outnumbered, but they fired a scattering
shot, and following their captured leader, broke through the line
around them and pursued the cavalry toward the military prison.

It was impossible to tell in the uproar which followed how many or how
few had been parties to the plot.  The mob, shrieking and shouting and
leaping in the air, swarmed across the parade ground, and from a dozen
different points men rose above the heads of the people and harangued
them in violent speeches.  And while some of the soldiers and the
citizens gathered anxiously about these orators, others ran through the
city calling for the rescue of the President, for an attack on the
palace, and shrieking "Long live the Government!" and "Long live the
Revolution!"  The State carriage raced through the narrow streets with
its body-guard galloping around it, sweeping down in its rush stray
pedestrians, and scattering the chairs and tables in front of the
caf;s.  As it dashed up the long avenue of the palace, Stuart called
his men back and ordered them to shut and barricade the great iron
gates and to guard them against the coming of the mob, while
MacWilliams and young Langham pulled open the carriage door and
assisted the President's wife and her terrified companion to alight.
Madame Alvarez was trembling with excitement as she leaned on Langham's
arm, but she showed no signs of fear in her face or in her manner.

"Mr. Clay has gone to bring your travelling carriage to the rear door,"
Langham said.  "Stuart tells us it is harnessed and ready.  You will
hurry, please, and get whatever you need to carry with you.  We will
see you safely to the coast."

As they entered the hall, and were ascending the great marble stairway,
Hope and her groom, who had followed in the rear of the cavalry, came
running to meet them.  "I got in by the back way," Hope explained.
"The streets there are all deserted. How can I help you?" she asked,
eagerly.

"By leaving me," cried the older woman.  "Good God, child, have I not
enough to answer for without dragging you into this? Go home at once
through the botanical garden, and then by way of the wharves.  That
part of the city is still empty."

"Where are your servants; why are they not here?" Hope demanded without
heeding her.  The palace was strangely empty; no footsteps came running
to greet them, no doors opened or shut as they hurried to Madame
Alvarez's apartments.  The servants of the household had fled at the
first sound of the uproar in the city, and the dresses and ornaments
scattered on the floor told that they had not gone empty-handed.  The
woman who had accompanied Madame Alvarez to the review sank weeping on
the bed, and then, as the shouts grew suddenly louder and more near,
ran to hide herself in the upper stories of the house.  Hope crossed to
the window and saw a great mob of soldiers and citizens sweep around
the corner and throw themselves against the iron fence of the palace.
"You will have to hurry," she said.  "Remember, you are risking the
lives of those boys by your delay."

There was a large bed in the room, and Madame Alvarez had pulled it
forward and was bending over a safe that had opened in the wall, and
which had been hidden by the head board of the bed. She held up a
bundle of papers in her hand, wrapped in a leather portfolio.  "Do you
see these?" she cried, "they are drafts for five millions of dollars."
She tossed them back into the safe and swung the door shut.

"You are a witness.  I do not take them," she said.

"I don't understand," Hope answered, "but hurry.  Have you everything
you want--have you your jewels?"

"Yes," the woman answered, as she rose to her feet, "they are mine."

A yell more loud and terrible than any that had gone before rose from
the garden below, and there was the sound of iron beating against iron,
and cries of rage and execration from a great multitude.

"I will not go!" the Spanish woman cried, suddenly.  "I will not leave
Alvarez to that mob.  If they want to kill me, let them kill me."  She
threw the bag that held her jewels on the bed, and pushing open the
window stepped out upon the balcony.  She was conspicuous in her black
dress against the yellow stucco of the wall, and in an instant the mob
saw her and a mad shout of exultation and anger rose from the mass that
beat and crushed itself against the high iron railings of the garden.
Hope caught the woman by the skirt and dragged her back.  "You are
mad," she said.  "What good can you do your husband here?  Save
yourself and he will come to you when he can.  There is nothing you can
do for him now; you cannot give your life for him.  You are wasting it,
and you are risking the lives of the men who are waiting for us below.
Come, I tell you."

MacWilliams left Clay waiting beside the diligence and ran from the
stable through the empty house and down the marble stairs to the garden
without meeting any one on his way.  He saw Stuart helping and
directing his men to barricade the gates with iron urns and garden
benches and sentry-boxes.  Outside the mob were firing at him with
their revolvers, and calling him foul names, but Stuart did not seem to
hear them.  He greeted MacWilliams with a cheerful little laugh.
"Well," he asked, "is she ready?"

"No, but we are.  Clay and I've been waiting there for five minutes.
We found Miss Hope's groom and sent him back to the Palms with a
message to King.  We told him to run the yacht to Los Bocos and lie off
shore until we came.  He is to take her on down the coast to Truxillo,
where our man-of-war is lying, and they will give her shelter as a
political refugee."

"Why don't you drive her to the Palms at once?" demanded Stuart,
anxiously, "and take her on board the yacht there?  It is ten miles to
Bocos and the roads are very bad."

"Clay says we could never get her through the city," MacWilliams
answered.  "We should have to fight all the way. But the city to the
south is deserted, and by going out by the back roads, we can make
Bocos by ten o'clock to-night.  The yacht should reach there by seven."

"You are right; go back.  I will call off some of my men.  The rest
must hold this mob back until you start; then I will follow with the
others.  Where is Miss Hope?"

"We don't know.  Clay is frantic.  Her groom says she is somewhere in
the palace."

"Hurry," Stuart commanded.  "If Mendoza gets here before Madame Alvarez
leaves, it will be too late."

MacWilliams sprang up the steps of the palace, and Stuart, calling to
the men nearest him to follow, started after him on a run.

As Stuart entered the palace with his men at his heels, Clay was
hurrying from its rear entrance along the upper hall, and Hope and
Madame Alvarez were leaving the apartments of the latter at its front.
They met at the top of the main stairway just as Stuart put his foot on
its lower step.  The young Englishman heard the clatter of his men
following close behind him and leaped eagerly forward.  Half way to the
top the noise behind him ceased, and turning his head quickly he looked
back over his shoulder and saw that the men had halted at the foot of
the stairs and stood huddled together in disorder looking up at him.
Stuart glanced over their heads and down the hallway to the garden
beyond to see if they were followed, but the mob still fought from the
outer side of the barricade.  He waved his sword impatiently and
started forward again.  "Come on!" he shouted. But the men below him
did not move.  Stuart halted once more and this time turned about and
looked down upon them with surprise and anger.  There was not one of
them he could not have called by name.  He knew all their little
troubles, their love-affairs, even.  They came to him for comfort and
advice, and to beg for money.  He had regarded them as his children,
and he was proud of them as soldiers because they were the work of his
hands.

So, instead of a sharp command, he asked, "What is it?" in surprise,
and stared at them wondering.  He could not or would not comprehend,
even though he saw that those in the front rank were pushing back and
those behind were urging them forward.  The muzzles of their carbines
were directed at every point, and on their faces fear and hate and
cowardice were written in varying likenesses.

"What does this mean?" Stuart demanded, sharply.  "What are you waiting
for?"

Clay had just reached the top of the stairs.  He saw Madame Alvarez and
Hope coming toward him, and at the sight of Hope he gave an exclamation
of relief.

Then his eyes turned and fell on the tableau below, on Stuart's back,
as he stood confronting the men, and on their scowling upturned faces
and half-lifted carbines.  Clay had lived for a longer time among
Spanish-Americans than had the English subaltern, or else he was the
quicker of the two to believe in evil and ingratitude, for he gave a
cry of warning, and motioned the women away.

"Stuart!" he cried.  "Come away; for God's sake, what are you doing?
Come back!"

The Englishman started at the sound of his friend's voice, but he did
not turn his head.  He began to descend the stairs slowly, a step at a
time, staring at the mob so fiercely that they shrank back before the
look of wounded pride and anger in his eyes. Those in the rear raised
and levelled their rifles.  Without taking his eyes from theirs, Stuart
drew his revolver, and with his sword swinging from its wrist-strap,
pointed his weapon at the mass below him.

"What does this mean?" he demanded.  "Is this mutiny?"

A voice from the rear of the crowd of men shrieked:  "Death to the
Spanish woman.  Death to all traitors.  Long live Mendoza," and the
others echoed the cry in chorus.

Clay sprang down the broad stairs calling, "Come to me;" but before he
could reach Stuart, a woman's voice rang out, in a long terrible cry of
terror, a cry that was neither a prayer nor an imprecation, but which
held the agony of both.  Stuart started, and looked up to where Madame
Alvarez had thrown herself toward him across the broad balustrade of
the stairway.  She was silent with fear, and her hand clutched at the
air, as she beckoned wildly to him.  Stuart stared at her with a
troubled smile and waved his empty hand to reassure her.  The movement
was final, for the men below, freed from the reproach of his eyes,
flung up their carbines and fired, some wildly, without placing their
guns at rest, and others steadily and aiming straight at his heart.

As the volley rang out and the smoke drifted up the great staircase,
the subaltern's hands tossed high above his head, his body sank into
itself and toppled backward, and, like a tired child falling to sleep,
the defeated soldier of fortune dropped back into the outstretched arms
of his friend.

Clay lifted him upon his knee, and crushed him closer against his
breast with one arm, while he tore with his free hand at the stock
about the throat and pushed his fingers in between the buttons of the
tunic.  They came forth again wet and colored crimson.

"Stuart!" Clay gasped.  "Stuart, speak to me, look at me!" He shook the
body in his arms with fierce roughness, peering into the face that
rested on his shoulder, as though he could command the eyes back again
to light and life.  "Don't leave me!" he said.  "For God's sake, old
man, don't leave me!"

But the head on his shoulder only sank the closer and the body
stiffened in his arms.  Clay raised his eyes and saw the soldiers still
standing, irresolute and appalled at what they had done, and awe-struck
at the sight of the grief before them.

Clay gave a cry as terrible as the cry of a woman who has seen her
child mangled before her eyes, and lowering the body quickly to the
steps, he ran at the scattering mass below him.  As he came they fled
down the corridor, shrieking and calling to their friends to throw open
the gates and begging them to admit the mob.  When they reached the
outer porch they turned, encouraged by the touch of numbers, and halted
to fire at the man who still followed them.

Clay stopped, with a look in his eyes which no one who knew them had
ever seen there, and smiled with pleasure in knowing himself a master
in what he had to do.  And at each report of his revolver one of
Stuart's assassins stumbled and pitched heavily forward on his face.
Then he turned and walked slowly back up the hall to the stairway like
a man moving in his sleep.  He neither saw nor heard the bullets that
bit spitefully at the walls about him and rattled among the glass
pendants of the great chandeliers above his head.  When he came to the
step on which the body lay he stooped and picked it up gently, and
holding it across his breast, strode on up the stairs.  MacWilliams and
Langham were coming toward him, and saw the helpless figure in his arms.

"What is it?" they cried; "is he wounded, is he hurt?"

"He is dead," Clay answered, passing on with his burden.  "Get Hope
away."

Madame Alvarez stood with the girl's arms about her, her eyes closed
and her figure trembling.

"Let me be!" she moaned.  "Don't touch me; let me die.  My God, what
have I to live for now?"  She shook off Hope's supporting arm, and
stood before them, all her former courage gone, trembling and shivering
in agony.  "I do not care what they do to me!" she cried.  She tore her
lace mantilla from her shoulders and threw it on the floor.  "I shall
not leave this place.  He is dead.  Why should I go?  He is dead.  They
have murdered him; he is dead."

"She is fainting," said Hope.  Her voice was strained and hard.

To her brother she seemed to have grown suddenly much older, and he
looked to her to tell him what to do.

"Take hold of her," she said.  "She will fall."  The woman sank back
into the arms of the men, trembling and moaning feebly.

"Now carry her to the carriage," said Hope.  "She has fainted; it is
better; she does not know what has happened."

Clay, still bearing the body in his arms, pushed open the first door
that stood ajar before him with his foot.  It opened into the great
banqueting hall of the palace, but he could not choose.

He had to consider now the safety of the living, whose lives were still
in jeopardy.

The long table in the centre of the hall was laid with places for many
people, for it had been prepared for the President and the President's
guests, who were to have joined with him in celebrating the successful
conclusion of the review.  From outside the light of the sun, which was
just sinking behind the mountains, shone dimly upon the silver on the
board, on the glass and napery, and the massive gilt centre-pieces
filled with great clusters of fresh flowers.  It looked as though the
servants had but just left the room.  Even the candles had been lit in
readiness, and as their flames wavered and smoked in the evening breeze
they cast uncertain shadows on the walls and showed the stern faces of
the soldier presidents frowning down on the crowded table from their
gilded frames.

There was a great leather lounge stretching along one side of the hall,
and Clay moved toward this quickly and laid his burden down.  He was
conscious that Hope was still following him.  He straightened the limbs
of the body and folded the arms across the breast and pressed his hand
for an instant on the cold hands of his friend, and then whispering
something between his lips, turned and walked hurriedly away.

Hope confronted him in the doorway.  She was sobbing silently. "Must we
leave him," she pleaded, "must we leave him--like this?"

From the garden there came the sound of hammers ringing on the iron
hinges, and a great crash of noises as the gate fell back from its
fastenings, and the mob rushed over the obstacles upon which it had
fallen.  It seemed as if their yells of exultation and anger must reach
even the ears of the dead man.

"They are calling Mendoza," Clay whispered, "he must be with them.
Come, we will have to run for our lives now."

But before he could guess what Hope was about to do, or could prevent
her, she had slipped past him and picked up Stuart's sword that had
fallen from his wrist to the floor, and laid it on the soldier's body,
and closed his hands upon its hilt.  She glanced quickly about her as
though looking for something, and then with a sob of relief ran to the
table, and sweeping it of an armful of its flowers, stepped swiftly
back again to the lounge and heaped them upon it.

"Come, for God's sake, come!" Clay called to her in a whisper from the
door.

Hope stood for an instant staring at the young Englishman as the
candle-light flickered over his white face, and then, dropping on her
knees, she pushed back the curly hair from about the boy's forehead and
kissed him.  Then, without turning to look again, she placed her hand
in Clay's and he ran with her, dragging her behind him down the length
of the hall, just as the mob entered it on the floor below them and
filled the palace with their shouts of triumph.

As the sun sank lower its light fell more dimly on the lonely figure in
the vast dining-hall, and as the gloom deepened there, the candles
burned with greater brilliancy, and the faces of the portraits shone
more clearly.

They seemed to be staring down less sternly now upon the white mortal
face of the brother-in-arms who had just joined them.

One who had known him among his own people would have seen in the
attitude and in the profile of the English soldier a likeness to his
ancestors of the Crusades who lay carved in stone in the village
church, with their faces turned to the sky, their faithful hounds
waiting at their feet, and their hands pressed upward in prayer.

And when, a moment later, the half-crazed mob of men and boys swept
into the great room, with Mendoza at their head, something of the
pathos of the young Englishman's death in his foreign place of exile
must have touched them, for they stopped appalled and startled, and
pressed back upon their fellows, with eager whispers.  The
Spanish-American General strode boldly forward, but his eyes lowered
before the calm, white face, and either because the lighted candles and
the flowers awoke in him some memory of the great Church that had
nursed him, or because the jagged holes in the soldier's tunic appealed
to what was bravest in him, he crossed himself quickly, and then
raising his hands slowly to his visor, lifted his hat and pointed with
it to the door.  And the mob, without once looking back at the rich
treasure of silver on the table, pushed out before him, stepping
softly, as though they had intruded on a shrine.