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 café, 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

cafés. 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.