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The Popular Magazine/Volume 23/Number 2/Guns—and a Girl

HE band of the Third Regiment of Zapadores was playing the “March Benito Juarez” there in the little band stand sprouting from the cannas in the middle of the plaza. Around and around the graveled walks on the four sides of the plaza strolled the caballeros and the señoritas of Nuevo Laredo. The young men marched in groups of twos and threes, always from right to left. The laughing, half-veiled girls, daring to cast eyes and flick their fans flirtatiously, paced the four walks of the plaza in an opposite direction. Quick whispers were passed, sly glances exchanged when group passed group.

Mammas and duennas sat on the benches in the shadows. Their eyes were never once beguiled by the studied carelessness of the señoritas on parade. Nor did the little airs of bravado, the covert glances of the young caballeros who passed in opposite formation escape them. The gallant of Nuevo Laredo, as of all Mexico, is ever under fire of a battery of eyes.

So the band played the “March Benito Juarez”; then, finishing the quick time, slipped into the languorous, halting measures of a waltz—all fire, seductive, breath of orange flowers and acacia. Music and laughter were there in the plaza of Nuevo Laredo, yet out in the mesquite wilderness, only fifteen miles away, lay six hundred men of the revolution, awaiting precious guns for the attack upon the town.

Out there under the dust of summer stars José and Gabriel de los Santos, the jackals of the Maderistas in Tamatlipas State, waited, ready to strike if only the guns would come from over the border. There in Nuevo Laredo a block from the plaza stood the dingy cuartel, in which General Bernardo Alvarez Garcia, the old lion of Puebla, held some three hundred and fifty soldiers of Diaz in iron grip—waiting.

Thus it had been for two weeks. The mesquite wilderness delayed launching its crop of steel and death at the town. The little cuartel guarded close its ranks of defenders. Not a rifle was seen outside its loopholed walls. Only a bugle sounded muffled within its hidden barricades night and morning to tell Nuevo Laredo that Porfirio Diaz was still supreme commander of that town at least.

Pelton sat on one of the benches with the mammas and the duennas while the band played and the chattering señoritas passed and repassed. He sat with his feet sprawling out and his hands in his pockets. His battered straw hat was pushed back from his forehead, and on his bony, deeply etched face there was not a flicker of expression. He smoked one corn-husk cigarette after another languidly.

Nobody could know better than Pelton that his attitude was not correct. He would not have sprawled that way in the lounge room of the University Club back on Fifth Avenue. But Joseph Warren Pelton, B. A., Harvard, Rumpty-umph, in the lounge room of the University Club in New York was one man, and Pelton, secret agent, treasury department, U. S. A., on a plaza bench in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, was quite another. Why Joseph Warren Pelton, of Harvard, should have elected to be Pelton of the secret service on mission to protect the neutrality of the Texas border is purely Pelton's business, and does not enter here.

One might reasonably wonder what right a secret agent of the treasury department had to sit on a plaza bench over the river in Mexico. In his capacity of secret agent none, to be sure. His province ended on the north side of the international monument in the middle of the bridge linking the Laredo of Texas with the Laredo of Tamaulipas; the Rio Bravo was his boundary. But when Pelton had come to Laredo of Texas, more Mexican in its partisanship than Mexican Laredo itself, he crossed the bridge one night, and had a little confab with old General Garcia in the cuartel. The lion of Puebla was naturally enthusiastically in sympathy with Pelton's mission, which was to prevent gun running from the Texas shore of the river, and so, any night he pleased, Pelton was privileged to put his straddling legs in front of a bench on the plaza, even though he wore a queer silver shield pinned to one suspender band.

As the brass music sobbed in waltz measure and the shuffling streams of promenaders passed him, Pelton cast an occasional glance at the lighted clock dial over the Palace of Justice. When the minute hand slipped past the hour of nine-thirty, he stopped smoking his corn-husk cigarettes, and sat tensely alert. The clock pointed nine-forty, nine-fifty-five, ten. Pelton's eyes had been the more keenly scrutinizing the passing faces during the latter moments. When the last stroke of ten sounded, he rose, pulled his gangling frame together with an odd, hitching movement of the shoulders, and slouched off through a bypath until he was out of the circle of the paraders and in one of the dark side streets.

There the secret agent quickened his pace, and walked surely through a tangle of narrow streets until he came out upon a road ending abruptly at the bluff's edge over the river. Across the black Rio Bravo the lights of Laredo shone. The huge arc of the international bridge blurred the star glow.

Pelton stopped before the last adobe house at the road's end. He stepped into the shadow of the thick wall that surrounded the house, and whistled once very lightly. No sound but the gurgling of the river over its sand bars. Pelton waited a full five minutes, then pushed open the garden gate, and entered.

A short path, bordered by sunken beer bottles, led through the beds of hollyhocks and marigolds to the door of the adobe dwelling. There was no light in the two front windows. The door, half opened, cut a slice out of the deeper blackness of the interior. The American started up the path toward the door. A sudden metallic glint of light struck up from one line of the bottle border near where a little wilderness of rank hollyhock stalks fringed the path. Pelton stopped, and looked down.

A bared human foot and portion of ankle rested stiffly on the butts of the sunken bottles. Pelton knelt with a sharp intake of the breath, and touched the foot. His hand jumped away, smeared and sticky. He fumbled for a match. The flame split the shadows cast by the hollyhocks.

The foot that he saw was shod with a mule's shoe. The steel was clamped tightly to the sole. Nail points protruded through the flesh over the arch.

Another bare foot, from which a mule's shoe sprung grotesquely, was drawn up under the ankle of the first. Both feet sprouted abruptly from the jungle of the hollyhocks.

Pelton seized the ankles, and pulled a body out onto the path. It was that of a Mexican youth, maybe eighteen years old. A black silk handkerchief was bound tightly over the mouth. The eyes were opened wide, pupils rolled far back. Pelton felt for the heart. It was thudding at crazy intervals. He unbound the gag, and as he did so he felt the crackle of paper under his fingers.

Another match. Pelton saw a little wisp of paper protruding from one nostril. He pulled it out, and the flare of the match showed traces of script on it. With quick fingers, he unrolled the paper tube, and held the light close. This was written there:

As if in hasty afterthought, this line was added beneath the signature:

Pelton was not a man of squeamish nerves, but the sight of those steel-shod, bloody feet, propped on the butts of the mule shoes, sent a sudden chill spasm sweeping down his back. Instantly his mind reconstructed a scene of agony there before the darkened adobe house—a handkerchief muffling screams; the clink-clink of a hammer driving steel nails through tortured flesh and bone; brutal hands holding a writhing body still until the work of bitter jest should be completed.

So this had been the way of Split-nose Gonzales, chief of the gun-running junta across the river, to convey evidence of his disfavor of Pelton's business along the Rio Bravo! Manuel had been made to pay—Manuel, the colorless little roustabout of the Eagle Hotel over in Laredo, who had been easily persuaded to play the informer for a little, a pitiful little, of the treasury department's money. Pelton's hand once more reached to feel the labored tapping of Manuel's heart. He lit another match, and looked carefully at the turned back eyes.

“Nearly out,” he muttered; then he slipped the sinister note of Split-nose Gonzales into his pocket. He caught the sound of voices and a girl's laughter from over the wall. At the gate he met a girl and an elderly woman. At sight of him the girl started, and smothered a scream with a hurried gesture of her mantilla-draped arm. Pelton stumbled blindly in his beginner's Spanish.

“Do not scream, señorita—I am a friend—I am—it is”

“Speak in English, Señor Americano,” interrupted the girl; “I understand it more better than I speak.” Her voice was rich with the peculiar contralto timbre of the Mexican woman's speech. Excitement strained it, but it did not break.

“Manuel Rosarios, he is your brother?” Pelton strove for words to make softer the thing he had to tell.

“Si, señor, and thees, hees mother—our mother. But what”

“Tell your mother, señorita, to go in to him—there on the garden path. He”

“Ah, señor—señor—not—he ees not dead!” Pelton felt a hand clutch his sleeve, and even in the darkness the whites of two startled eyes shone below his. The elder woman, catching only the hint of fear in the speech she did not understand, began to supplicate the Virgin.

“He is hurt—badly hurt,” Pelton said. “You cannot help him except to take me to a doctor. No, no; don't go in! Come with me for a doctor.” Pelton took the girl by the shoulders, and turned her away from the gate when she made a step to enter. Instantly she whirled on him.

“Gringo, your hands on me!” The words cut like a whipcord. Then came instant repentance. “My pardon, señor”—the voice was low and pleading—“come, we go for thees doctor.” She spoke a few hurried words to the mother, who pushed open the gate. Pelton took the girl's arm, and hurried her down the dark street.

“Madre Dios!” The shrill scream rasped out of the dark behind them terribly. Señorita Rosarios sobbed and clung with both shaking hands to Pelton's arm. She asked no questions, but as they stumbled together over the uneven road toward the lights of the town, she murmured choking prayers in Spanish.

They found a doctor. Pelton whispered to him apart, and he fetched his instrument case, his face puckered in horror. The house was alight when the three of them returned. Neighbors were standing in silent groups before the adobe wall. A priest in black cassock hurried through the gate ahead of them.

Pelton passed through and down the path before he relinquished the girl's arm. As she stepped into the shaft of light streaming from the opened door for the first time, he glimpsed her face. Just in that second he caught the picture of two great, black eyes, wide with terror and the look of pleading of a child that fears a hurt; a rounded cheek, over which fugitive tendrils of black hair had slipped; full lips parted in the nerve strain of excitement; a strong, well-molded throat and neck, the color of rose on ivory. Then the shutter of darkness snapped over the picture. Pelton was alone in the garden.

Some undefined sense of remorse for the part he had carelessly played in this eerie tragedy, an impelling recognition of the fitness of things, kept him in the garden until the end he knew to be inevitable should come. He found his way to a rude seat under the black shadows of a fig tree, from one limb of which a great olla hung. The swaying water jar looked like some body in chains on a gallows tree.

Pelton caught himself whispering the grim lines of Villon's “Epitaph” as he sat near the round bulk. He felt the significance of that night's horror poignantly. The threat against himself he ignored completely; only the devilish humor and cowardly retaliation of this Gonzales—Split-nose was the familiar sobriquet of the ex-brigand and smuggler along all the Texas border—were things which Pelton pondered there in the black garden.

During the month that he had been at Laredo, groping blindly to find the secret channels of the junta's gun trafficking, at every turn the sinister shadow of Split-nose Gonzales had faded just beyond the grip of his hands. Now he was in secret conference with the revolutionaries in José Bodega's saloon in Laredo; now he was slipping through the mesquite wilderness and over some ford of the Rio Bravo to carry a message to the brothers De los Santos on the Mexican side. Always he was so near, yet his face—his brutally marked face—Pelton had never seen.

Fortuitously little Manuel Rosarios, who blacked shoes at the Laredo hotel, had dropped a random word that gave Pelton his only ally. Manuel cared nothing for politics, but he knew much, and silver dollars were so large in Manuel's eyes that he could not see around their milled edges. Manuel had been so unobtrusive, so innocent in his nocturnal ramblings from meeting place to meeting place of the Laredo plotters. Through his reports, Pelton had finally begun to know the men and the haunts of those with whom he had to deal.

It had been Manuel who, between dabs of the blacking brush, had that very morning sent Pelton's heart pounding at double time. The secret agent recalled now the bobbing black head of the youth and the words that had been jerked cautiously from the roustabout's mouth:

“Guns are coming, señor—two hun'erd—I know everything—to-night—to-night, señor—at plaza. Be there, ha' pas' nine.”

Pelton spoke aloud:

“But to-night Manuel is shod for the rough roads of hell—and he knows everything—he knew everything!”

For more than an hour he sat by the hanging olla, watching the occasional figures that passed the single lamplit window visible to him, hearing the low murmur of neighbors' voices outside the wall and the occasional poignant outburst of women's wailing within the house. Then he saw the white dress of the Señorita Rosarios in the yellow light at the door. The girl clung weakly to the doorposts, her eyes striving to search the blackness of the garden. Pelton arose quickly, and hurried to her.

“Do you want—me, señorita?” He stepped into the path of light hesitatingly. The girl's eyes jumped to his. One hand went to her throat as if to still the torture of grief that stopped her speech.

“Yes, you,” she answered, in a dulled monotone, “Come—away from these eyes—of people.”

Pelton led her to the seat under the fig tree. For a minute she strove to check the sobs that slacked in her throat. Then: “Why were you here—in the garden—to-night?” she asked.

Pelton was choosing the words of his explanation. It had been the necessity of this explanation that had kept him there, yet now he stumbled.

“Senorita—I—your brother”

She did not wait.

“Who did thees things? You know.”

“Yes, I know, señorita.”

“Queekly—queekly” There was a catch of hysteria in the heavy contralto of the girl's voice. “Before he ees dying I will know.”

“It was Gonzales,” Pelton answered slowly—“Gonzales, called Split-nose.”

“Ah!” Pelton felt her two hands grip his arm. He felt them tremble. Rather clumsily he covered both of them with one of his.

“Gonzales, el Diablo!” she whispered. “And why, señor? Why?”

Then Pelton told her. He found the task difficult, embarrassing to mortification. In the telling he sensed a burden of responsibility pressing down and down, ever more ponderously. He did not try to justify himself; simply told her of how he had hired Manuel to do spy work. The girl sat very still until he had finished, even to the finding of the boy in the hollyhocks.

Then she rose suddenly, and stood facing Pelton. He saw her eyes, very wide and luminous in the dark. He saw her two hands clenched and flattened against her breast.

“Murderer!”

The white face was thrust forward so close that Pelton could see the teeth under the lips curled back.

“Murderer of my brother! Gringo, buyer of boys' souls for money! When he—with nails in hees feet—when he ees finished dying, it will not be Gonzales with bloody hands—ah, no—no—no!

“Gringo, your hands are making red! Gringo, your silver pesos are bloody—with Manuel's blood!”

The girl swayed and caught at the hanging olla to steady herself. Her words, checked but an instant, volleyed forth again, burning, vibrant:

“Two weemen are left alone, gringo! They are two weak weemen, having none of your pesos to buy blood. Look at me! I am thees one of them to make a cross from Manuel's blood on you. See me; I do it now!”

The girl raised her white arm, and against the blackness of the garden her hand, with a pointing finger, moved swiftly in making the sign of the cross.

“Now, go!” she said.

Pelton had no word to answer. He left the garden, left a white-blurred figure standing alone by the hanging olla.

A telegram lay under his room door in the Eagle Hotel. It read:

Gaines was division superintendent of the secret service along the border, with his office in San Antonio.

Pelton studied the telegram. Two hundred coming, said Gaines. Two hundred rifles billed as harrows shipped ostensibly to Laredo; yes, but to be dropped somewhere off in the brush at a flag station. Gonzales and his men would be there to spirit the rifles through the mesquite, over a ford in the Rio Bravo, and out to the camp of the De los Santos. But where, when would those guns be dropped; what would be the secret path through the miles square wilderness of the eternal mesquite to feel the touch of laden horses' hoofs; what shallow, sandy bar in the river would offer a safe passage over the border on a black night?

Aye, but Manuel knew—and Manuel was

Pelton shook his head in weariness as he lay in his ovenlike room for dragging hours, before his eyes the picture of a white arm puncturing a black curtain of darkness to trace up and down, right and left, a cross.

Two nights had passed since his bitter hours in the garden. On this, the third, Pelton was desperately ranging the streets of Laredo, hoping against hope that out of the blank walls of the adobe houses, from the heavy thickets of the scented oleanders some whisper, some sign might come to give him a clew to action. The freight clerk at the depot, the telegrapher, both Americans and sympathetic aids in this strangely un-American town, he had interviewed. They knew nothing of the whereabouts of those rifles, billed as harrows, No. 769,510, that were coming slowly down through the night somewhere off there where the low-hanging Texas stars made a white line of the horizon.

Pelton turned down into the single lighted main street which passes up the hill from the international bridge to skirt the plaza, duly laid out there when Laredo was a town of the old Mexican State of Tejas. The cathedral is on one side of the plaza; on another are the little stalls and booths of the Mexican hucksters, lighted by sickly flares at night; a moving-picture theater, which in summer is just a tin-roofed inclosure with canvas sides and fitted with rough benches like a circus arena.

Sole retreat of entertainment in the town, this moving-picture establishment was the center of night life. Between films row upon row of well-pleased spectators would pass out, grabbing return checks at the door, to line up before José Bodega's bar next door. The revolutionary junta had its unofficial headquarters in a back room of José Bodega's cantina, and its members amused themselves o' nights in the film shed. Every gun runner who was not out in the brush could be found after dark in one or the other of the two places. Bodega's was barred to Pelton for obvious reasons of policy; the moving-picture show was his chief reconnoitering place, therefore.

This night he sat far back on an obscure bench off a side aisle, whence in the periods when the lights were on he could see who passed in and out. Two stories of wild life on the plains, as conceived and executed in Sheepshead Bay, New York, had rippled past on the sheet, and the lights went up again. A man and a woman rose from seats far down_in front, and began to walk up the aisle, passing Pelton's seat. The electric clusters overhead threw a strong light on their faces.

The woman was Señorita Rosarios. The man with her, who walked with an exaggerated swagger and clicked his spurs at every step, wore a wide-springing black mustache, waxed and curled. The nose above the mustache was splayed and flattened against the face; a white scar ran from the tip up over where the bone of the bridge should have been and on the length of the retreating forehead to the shadow under the wide sombrero. A devilish insolence was in the narrow black eyes.

There was but one such face on the border. This was Split-nose Gonzales.

As Pelton watched the two approach, his surprise tensing all his nerves, he saw Gonzales slip his hand under the girl's arm with a patent air of proprietorship and whisper in her ear. Señorita Rosarios nodded and smiled.

Pelton turned his face away as they approached him. His precaution was unnecessary, for the lights flicked out that instant, and the spidery figures began to dance across the sheet. In the dark, Pelton rose, and followed the two. He lingered on the fringe of the crowd about the ticket seller's window long enough to see Gonzales and his companion cross over to the plaza and disappear in the shade of the magnolias.

He arrived at the edge of the plaza's shadows just in time to see the two pass under the single sputtering arc light at the opposite corner of the square and turn into the black angle of Cathedral Street.

Pelton followed at a safe distance, keeping well within the shadow line of the adobe houses and guided, now by the sound of Gonzales' quick laughter, now by the flash of the girl's white dress, when light from an open door cut her figure out of the superlative darkness.

Two yellow points of light moved down the street many blocks away, and the clatter of horses' hoofs sounded. Even as the secret agent let his anxiety overcome caution and quickened his steps, the advancing yellow lights stopped a block ahead. Pelton just caught the glimmer of lights on carriage wheels, saw the señorita's white dress flick under the feeble radiance, and heard the slam of a carriage door. He was under an overhanging oleander bush not thirty feet away.

“Por el Nido, Francisco!” It was Split-nose Gonzales' voice.

The hack turned and rolled up a dark lane. Pelton did his best to keep up. He saw one yellow side light as the vehicle swung around the next corner; then the driver urged the horse into a trot, and Pelton stopped, panting. Against the wall of a low store building beside him was a wooden sign. “Calle Rio Bravo,” it read. It marked the river road that runs east and south from Laredo, out into the mesquite wilderness and skirting the river mesa.

Down the river road at night and with Split-nose Gonzales, Señorita Rosarios was riding—and “por el Nido”—“por el Nido.”

“Nido—Nido; what the devil does Nido mean?” Pelton furiously strove to flog his imperfect knowledge of Spanish into answering. Here he was on the edge of getting something—he had it, and he didn't have it, and the moments were racing by.

“El Nido—the dog house? Certainly not. Well, then, the—the—el hencoop—el Something to do with a roost, a perch all right! Hey! El Bird's Nest!”

Out of the dark the printed line in his “Spanish for Beginners” hit Pelton squarely in the face. There it was, in black-face type, “El nido”; in italics, “the bird's nest.” No doubt about it. “See the bird's nest, children,” and all that rot.

“For the Bird's Nest, Francisco.” That was the direction Gonzales had given the driver.

As Pelton walked back through the dark streets toward the still-lighted plaza, his mind wrestled with the sharp problem of contradictions that had suddenly popped out of the moving magic of the film shed. This girl, sister of little Manuel with the steel-shod feet, the girl who had called him murderer there in the garden and promised vengeance upon him, riding out into the night with the ruffian who had tortured and slain the brother! Why—why? And what was the Bird's Nest? Where was it? How could he

A chance—a single, desperate chance! The inspiration came in a flash. Could he do it? Yes, if luck was with him. Hot with the desire to dare everything, Pelton hurried over to where the crowd was just beginning to eddy out from the moving-picture theater. Three dilapidated hacks were at the curb directly in front of José Bodega's cantina, their drivers half asleep over the reins. Pelton opened the door of one from the street side so that he could not be seen from the sidewalk, and as he slammed the door with unnecessary violence he called:

“Por el Nido, 'Tonio!”

A query came in a sleep-heavy voice from the box.

“Si, por el Nido!” Pelton answered sharply. There was a heavy minute of suspense, and then the hack began to move. Pelton took a long breath. “It worked,” he murmured.

The hack swayed and rattled through the narrow streets of town, and then in a few minutes its wheels sank into the muffling dust of the country road. The fare filled its black interior with the smoke of many corn-husk cigarettes, while his mind raced ahead down the starlit road to where somewhere in the mazes of the mesquite a healthy night's adventure awaited the coming of a special agent of the treasury department. What he would discover; what he would do when he did discover—these were entertaining speculations that kept Pelton company through the dark. He slipped a holster around from under his jacket so that the big heavy butt of a forty-five rested handily to the front. So the journey continued for the better part of an hour.

Suddenly the hack stopped with a jolt. Pelton heard an exclamation from the driver, and he put his head out of the side window. Far up the road and approaching with wild pitching and yawing were two yellow lights. A faint clangor of chain traces and thudding of hoofs was audible. Pelton jumped down to the road. The driver addressed him excitedly in Spanish. Then out of the near darkness the two lights brought the bulk of a flying hack. A man stood on the driver's seat, holding the reins far out over the dashboard and yelling at a horse, which plunged in a clumsy gallop, head wagging from side to side at each straining leap.

“''Asesinato! Asesinato!”'' The driver of the careening rig bellowed to the stars as he pulled his beast back on its haunches. Pelton's driver yelled back interrogatives in excited staccato, then turned and addressed some blurred Spanish to Pelton. As he did so he caught sight of the long, white face of the secret agent in the circle of lamplight, and his jaw dropped. Pelton went over to the driver of the flying specter.

“What's the trouble?” he asked.

The man gurgled in his excitement, and pointed back to the black interior of his hack. Pelton's driver, spurred by contagion of the other's hysteria, brought one of his carriage lamps, and held it with a shaking hand up over the sill of the cab-window space. Then Pelton looked in.

The shape of a man lay sprawling between the seat and the floor. His face, thrown back against the cushion, was yellow-white, and the mouth beneath a wide-springing black mustache was twisted into the grisly caricature of a grin. Pelton shifted the light, and looked closer. He saw a splayed nose and a blue-white scar that bisected the forehead.

“Split-nose Gonzales!”

“Si—si, señor,” the hackman gasped. “Señor Gonzales, asesinado!”

The light from the carriage lantern sparked against something silver white that stuck out from the middle of the velveteen jacket. Pelton moved the lamp down. The silvery stalk sprouting from the jacket was the pearl handle of a dirk, over the heart. Pelton turned, and looked into the wide eyes of the driver.

“The girl—where is she?”

The cochero's eyes suddenly narrowed, and his face became blank under the level gaze of the American. Pelton caught his own driver flashing a message to his fellow Mexican with a quick hand.

“The girl who was in this hack—where is she?” Pelton repeated the question sharply.

Then the Mexican fell back upon the old subterfuge: “''No sabe Ingilessa, señor. Dispense me—no sabe!”''

“But you sabe this?” Pelton patted the stock of his gun. “Now you turn around and drive back to el Nido, and”—this to his own driver—“you drive behind him—pronto!”

The Mexicans exchanged quick glances, but Pelton stood in the road with the thumb of his right hand crooked over his belt very near the butt of the .45. That was potent argument. The driver of the murdered Gonzales turned his hack with much effort, and started back on the road down which he had so recently come on the gallop. Then the secret agent climbed into his own conveyance, choosing this time to sit with the driver, and the little procession moved off up the aisle of the feathery mesquite.

After about fifteen minutes of traveling, the leading hack turned off into a still narrower alley through the brush. The two hacks twisted, and turned between barricades of the rank cactus, black and menacing in the starlight, and the plumes of the mesquite whipped the sides of the ancient structures. All the while Pelton sat with his elbow in his driver's ribs, and his hand on the grip of his revolver where the driver could see it if he chose.

Abruptly a long, low house lifted from the black wilderness. It stood in a little clearing, and the rails of a horse corral crisscrossed the star field on a little rise behind the house. Not a light anywhere along the shadow bulk of the house front; not a sound. The two hacks stopped on the edge of a clearing at some distance away, and Pelton's driver turned and looked at him with insolence scarcely veiled.

“Well, señor?”

“You and your friend get down,” Pelton ordered. “You tell him. There, all right. Now come with me. And walk ahead of me up to the house.”

The two obeyed with a surly show of indifference. They crossed to the house, and Pelton pounded with his revolver butt on the front door. No answer. He tried the wooden shutters that covered the two front windows; they were secured from within. Just as he stepped off the low porch, the saw-tooth voice of a burro out in the corral was lifted in lamentation. The sound shattered the silence uncannily.

After a moment's thought, Pelton started toward the corral, still enforcing the ungracious company of the two Mexicans with a significant hand on his weapon. As he topped the rise of the little hill, he saw a half mile or so away the dim, black ramparts of the river mesa on the Mexican side, and below them, running black as a stream of tar, the river itself. Nearer at hand were a dozen and more strange shapes, all sharp blocks and angles, which stirred and shifted restlessly in a dim line along the rail fence of the corral. A horse whinnied. A bell tinkled softly.

In another minute Pelton was at the fence. There he found, tethered all in line, a string of pack burros. They were all packed; the bulks of long boxes overtopped the ears of the little beasts, and gave each a distorted, bizarre appearance as if he had been built out of dominoes.

A sudden ejaculation caused Pelton to turn his head; the Mexicans were conversing together in excited whispers. The American's pulse was pounding hard, and a strange sense of exultation gripped his heart as he struck a match and held it to the end of one of the roped boxes on a burro's back.

“Remington” was stamped there in black.

Joseph Warren Pelton, of Harvard, never did quicker thinking than at that moment. Here were the guns; there, a half mile away, was the river—and beyond, Mexico! But where were the gun runners who had made everything ready for the quick dash over the river? Was it that—yes, by everything beautiful, it must be! They had gone ahead to cross the ford and get in touch with the insurrectos across the river. Gonzales—Gonzales back there in the hack—was the one who had been delegated to take the pack train down to the river and over to the Mexican side. They must be waiting for Gonzales, even now off there in the dark.

Pelton pulled his resolver from the holster, and dropped the play of armed truce between himself and the two cocheros.

“Go find that horse we heard, and bring him to me,” he commanded.

The one who had been his driver quailed at the sight of steel, and hurried down the line of tethered beasts. He was back in a moment, leading a saddled broncho. Pelton swung into the saddle, and, sitting there with the long snout of the revolver across the pommel, he spoke again with dry incisiveness.

“Now, you, "Tonio, you'll leave your hack here and come with me to show me the way back to the river road. Then you'll come back here, and you and the other fellow will stay here until morning. Both of you stay here, sabe? And if you follow me, I'll have to shoot you; that's all.”

“Si, señor; but Gonzales?”

“Oh, they”—Pelton pointed over to the river cañon—“they'll tell you what to do with him when they come back. Now cut those burros loose, 'Tonio; bring the bell burro to me, and then you trot ahead as fast as you can down to the river road. And, 'Tonio, look here! Remember this will be pointing at you all the way—at your back. So don't play any tricks!”

The burros were cut loose; the bell burro trotted at the end of the tether rope behind Pelton's broncho, and so, at a trot, the weird procession of misshapen beasts passed the yellow eyes of the hacks, passed Split-nose Gonzales smiling under his black mustache, and was swallowed up in the maw of the thicket.

Pelton rode close behind the Mexican, who, half running and with his head bent against the flailing of the mesquite, found the trail. Pelton heard his rasping curses, and kept him closely covered. He rode with every nerve at wire tautness, fearing that each moment would bring a challenge out of the dark, the whanging of revolvers.

Nothing but blind chance, he said, to himself, could order it that this stealing of the guns from under the very noses of the junta's coyotes should be accomplished. He strained his eyes at the dark, and believed that he could already see horsemen, puzzled at Gonzales' delay, swinging their horses from the river brink, and putting them to the trail back to the hacienda to learn the cause. Then pursuit would follow.

Gray light tipped the mesa when the Mexican stopped, panting, and pointed to the broad wheel tracks of the river road. Pelton nodded, and as he marshaled his pack train into the road he waved his hand back toward el Nido.

“Remember,” he called, “you'll get shot if you follow.”

A rock struck Pelton's straw hat, and sent it spinning into the dust. The Mexican had the last word.

As fast as the little bell burro's feet could pace, Pelton urged his broncho. He turned in his saddle, and looked back. Twelve grotesque little peaks, sharp-cornered and high-topped, bobbed and swayed behind him. The light was strong enough now to let him see the nodding heads and pronged ears of those nearest. He laughed.

“Now, if I could only turn the corner into Sherry's and get each of these checked at the door. Hey—up there, Alcibiades!”

But Pelton's hilarity was more hysterical than genuine. The swift reel of events that night had brought tragedy and menace; menace was pressing close yet. And mystery; yes, mystery as sinister as Gonzales' smile.

Pelton attacked the rebus of that night. Why had the Señorita Rosarios chosen to go out into the dark with a cutthroat, the murderer of her brother, if it was not to kill him? But did she kill him? How did she disappear, then? When did the driver discover that a dead man nodded alone in his hack? Did the driver connive at murder; had he hidden the girl, or was it possible that she herself had met death in the dark?

The brooding dawn, gray-white and stealthy in approach, made mystery tangible, clothed bush and cactus skeleton with garments of the unreal. And on the road behind the grudging shadows cloaked—what?

“Hup! Hey—hup there, Alcibiades!”

The east was banded now with pale stripes of rose; they blushed to cherry, to garnet, and the nearer stars burned out. Night was pushed hack like a curtain. The morning scent of dew on flowers hung low over the green wilderness, and the mourning dove sent a hail to the new day. The single horseman in the dawn turned again and again to look back to where the ribbon of road led out into the pale radiance. Did shadows move back there against the sky line, or were those dots that rose and fell, rose and fell over the wall of the mesquite, only the nodding flower clusters of the yucca?

“Hooey, back there! Hump yourself!”

Pelton rounded a sharp bend in the road, and his horse shied. A girl, clad in white, jumped to her feet from a bank of purple lupines by the roadside, and stood irresolute, seeming ready to run into the near-by thicket, yet daring to stay. Her face, turned over one shoulder, was chalk white and haggard.

“Señorita Rosarios!” Pelton reined in, and sprang to the girl's side.

“Santa Maria! You, Señor Americano?”

Terror was in her voice, and, too, a broken, helpless note. The girl hid her eyes with her arms, and her body shrank before Pelton's approach.

“Away from me! Away from me!” she cried chokingly.

“Listen, señorita”—Pelton spoke hurriedly, and with a hard note of command. “They are behind—Gonzales' men. They are riding to catch me—and you. They know—I know—about Gonzales”—the girl sobbed and crossed herself—“and they will kill you and kill me if they catch us. Come!”

Pelton took her arm, and started to pull her toward his horse.

“But—but—I would like to keel you once.” The girl was wrestling to free herself. “Heem—Gonzales—first, an' then you.”

With no other word, Pelton suddenly caught Señorita Rosarios in his arms, and lifted her to the saddle. He swung up behind her, and with one arm he kept the struggling girl on the horse, while he groped with the other behind him for the bell burro's tether rope.

“Get a-going, Al, old boy! Quick there, you bell rabbit!”

The girl ceased to struggle, and tried to sit very stiffly away from Pelton. He could see her shoulders shake with an occasional spasm of sobbing, but she said nothing; nor did he.

There was dust against the face of the dawn behind them, and he had seen it!

Five long minutes passed; ten. No sound but the jangle-jangle of the bell and the padding of many little hoofs on the road.

“Halt!”

A cavalryman in brown khaki turned his horse out into the road from the bushes, and the muzzle of his carbine bore on Pelton.

“Don't make a move until I come up to you!”

The trooper whistled, and three other brown campaign hats blossomed from the mesquite as horses moved from cover out to the road.

“Open my coat in front here”—Pelton's voice thrilled in spite of himself—“and you'll find my badge. I am an officer of the treasury department. This outfit here is guns. I took them back there in the mesquite on the river mesa.”

The trooper did take a squint at Pelton's badge, and a very frank look at the girl, who was on the saddle in front of him. The others were crowding around him by this time, congratulating in high-pitched, eager voices and estimating the number of guns in the cases the burros carried.

“Your outfit sure did advertise itself, brother,” a lengthy, weather-tanned corporal said. “We was a-comin' out from the post to ride the river road, lookin' for just what you picked up, and we heerd you comin' lickety-split. So we natch'ly laid low, and allowed we was going to do a little ambushin' of you.”

Hurriedly Pelton told then of the pursuers who, he was certain, were on his back road. The corporal told off two cavalrymen to ride slowly along the road and see what they could see.

“And now,” Pelton concluded, “I'll leave the guns for you to take in to the post. Tell Colonel Glynn with my compliments that I'll be around later in the morning to report of them. I have—that is, this young woman helped me make the raid, and I must take her to her home.”

The corporal took the lead rope of the bell burro, grinning understandingly; then Pelton kicked the flanks of the broncho, and he and the girl were soon by themselves again.

During the brief colloquy, Señorita Rosarios had sat stiffly erect, her head turned away from the troopers. Pelton had seen the blood mount to her cheek when she had been referred to; so close she was to him that the ripples of the red flush on her neck and cheek played like sunlight through fragile porcelain right under his eyes. Nor did she turn her eyes to his or speak, now that they were again on their way. He respected her silence, and said nothing. It was the girl who finally. broke silence.

“Señor”—her voice was low and vibrant; her eyes held resolutely to the front—“Señor, what now do you do with me?”

“I will take you over the ford, the second ford below town,” Pelton answered, “and then I will leave you—in Mexico. It will not be far to your home.”

Many minutes passed. The sun popped over the mesas behind them of a sudden, and the rosy light struck through the girl's thin white gown. The tint of her neck and shoulders—tint of rose on old ivory—deepened and warmed.

“You take me to Mexico, señor; you—do not arres' me?” Still the voice came low, but her head did not turn. “I am—I did—I have keel Gonzales. You know I do thees thing—an' you do not arres' me?”

“No, señorita. Nobody knows but I and the cochero, and he does not know your name, your face, even.”

They had turned from the river road, and were descending the trail to the river. The roofs and white walls of the two Laredos, a mile away, were all green and red gold in the new sunlight.

“But—but” The girl's voice broke for an instant, then steadied. “You, señor, also I was make my vow to keel—for Manuel's death. First Gonzales—then you, as I tole you.”

“Yes.”

“An' you are taking me to Mexico—you de-liver me, señor?”

Pelton made no response. He put the sturdy little broncho to the shallow ford, and when the water rose to the saddle girth he lifted the girl in his arms so that she should be dry, and thus he held her for many minutes. She steadied herself with an arm that passed around his neck, first haltingly, and then with simple assurance. The broncho's footing was sure. He climbed to the low, sandy shore where the feathery mesquite dipped its branches to the yellow current. There was a trail leading from the bank by zigzags up to the top of the mesa. Pelton jumped off the saddle, and raised his hands to assist the girl to the ground.

Her face was turned to his now for the first time. It was flushed. Her eyes, purple black like the fruit of the aguacate, seemed filmed and misty with a sudden passion of longing, of half-formed resolve. Morning light made more red the lips parted for speech that would not be voiced. She took Pelton's hands, and dropped lightly to the ground. Still she held his hands with a tightening grip. She swayed toward him ever so slightly, then caught herself, and the rose on her cheeks grew deeper.

“Señor—Señor Americano—I—I cannot say—I cannot” A subtle note of pleading and of tenderness crept into her voice. “Plees, señor, plees—I may kees you—for go'by?”

Her arms flashed up, and her hands locked behind his neck. She drew his face down, and she kissed him fair upon the mouth. Then, blushing scarlet, she turned and ran up the trail.

Pelton saw a flash of her white skirt through the greenery, heard the clatter of a pebble loosened—then he was alone.


text: Talk:King Cophetua of Klondyke

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title: Talk:King Cophetua of Klondyke


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"Who measured earth, described the starry spheres, And traced the long records of lunar years." Pope.

did not return from the exercise of his official duties, until late in the evening of the following day. It had been one portion of his business to superintend the arrest of part of a gang of counterfeiters, that had, even at that early period, buried themselves in the woods, to manufacture their base coin, which they afterwards circulated from one end of the Union to the other. The expedition had been completely successful, and about midnight the Sheriff entered the village, at the head of a posse of deputies and constables, in the centre of whom rode, pinioned, four of the malefactors. At the gate of the Mansion-house they separated, Mr. Jones directing his assistants to proceed with their charge to the county gaol, while he pursued his own way up the gravelled walk, with that kind of self-satisfaction that a man of his organization would feel, who had, really, for once, done a very clever thing.

"Holla! Aggy!" shouted the Sheriff, when he reached the door; "where are you, you black dog? will you keep me here in the dark all night?—


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 when teaching a rather dull boy, Arnold spoke somewhat sharply to him, on which the pupil looked up in his face and said, "Why do you speak angrily, sir? indeed, I am doing the best I can." Years afterwards, Arnold used to tell the story to his children, and added, "I never felt so much in my life—that look and that speech I have never forgotten."

From the numerous instances already cited of men of humble station who have risen to distinction in science and literature, it will be obvious that labour is by no means incompatible with the highest intellectual culture. Work in moderation is healthy, as well as agreeable to the human constitution. Work educates the body, as study educates the mind; and that is the best state of society in which there is some work for every man's leisure, and some leisure for every man's work. Even the leisure classes are in a measure compelled to work, sometimes as a relief from ennui, but in most cases to gratify an instinct which they cannot resist. Some go fox-hunting in the English counties, others grouse-shooting on the Scotch hills, while many wander away every summer to climb mountains in Switzerland. Hence the boating, running, cricketing, and athletic sports of the public schools, in which our young men at the same time so healthfully cultivate their strength both of mind and body. It is said that the Duke of Wellington, when once looking on at the boys engaged in their sports in the play-ground at Eton, where he had spent many of his own younger days, made the remark, "It was there that the battle of Waterloo was won!"

Daniel Malthus urged his son when at college


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 Holla! Aggy! Brave! Brave! hoy, hoy-where have you got to, Brave? Off his watch! Every body is asleep but myself! poor I must keep my eyes open, that others may sleep in safety. Brave! Brave! Well, I will say this for the dog, lazy as he's grown, that it is the first time I ever knew him let any one come to the door after dark, without having a smell to know whether it was an honest man or not. He could tell by his nose, almost as well as I could myself by looking at them. Holla! you Agamemnon! where are you? Oh! here comes the dog at last."

By this time the Sheriff had dismounted, and observed a form, which he supposed to be that of Brave, slowly creeping out of the kennel; when, to his astonishment, it reared itself on two legs instead of four, and he was able to distinguish, by the star-light, the curly head and dark visage of the negro.

"Ha! what the devil are you doing there, you black rascal?" he cried; "is it not hot enough for your Guinea blood in the house, this warm night, but you must drive out the poor dog and sleep in his straw!"

By this time the boy was quite awake, and, with a blubbering whine, he attempted to reply to his master.

"Oh! masser Richard! masser Richard! such a ting! such a ting! I nebber tink a could 'appen! nebber tink he die! Oh, Lor-a-gor! a'nt bury—keep 'em till masser Richard get back—got a grabe dug"—

Here the feelings of the negro completely got the mastery, and instead of making any intelligible explanation of the causes of his grief, he blubbered aloud.

"Eh! what! buried! grave! dead!" exclaimed Richard, with a tremour in his voice; "nothing


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 serious? Nothing has happened to Benjamin, I hope? I know he has been bilious; but I gave him"—

"Oh! worser 'an a dat! worser? an a dat!" sobbed the negro. "Oh! de Lor! Miss 'Lizzy an a Miss Grant—walk—mountain—poor Bravy!—kill a lady—painter—Oh! Lor, Lor!—Natty Bumppo—tear he troat all open—come a see, masser Richard—such a booful copse—here he be—here he be."

As all this was perfectly inexplicable to the Sheriff, he was very glad to wait patiently until the black brought a lantern from the kitchen, when he followed Aggy to the kennel, where he beheld poor Brave, indeed, lying in his blood, stiff and cold, but decently covered with the great-coat of the negro. He was on the point of demanding an explanation; but the grief of the black, who had fallen asleep on his voluntary watch, having burst out afresh on his waking, utterly disqualified the lad from giving one. Luckily, at this moment the principal door of the house opened, and the coarse features of Benjamin were thrust over the threshold, with a candle elevated above them, shedding its dim rays around in such a manner as to exhibit the lights and shadows of his countenance. Richard threw his bridle to the black, and bidding him look to the horse, he entered the hall.

"What is the meaning of the dead dog?" he cried. "Where is Miss Temple?"

Benjamin made one of his square gestures, with the thumb of his left hand pointing over his right shoulder, as he answered—

"Turned in."

"Judge Temple where is he?"

"In his birth."

"But explain; why is Brave dead? and what is the cause of Aggy's grief?"


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 "Why, it's all down, Squire," said Benjamin, pointing to a slate that lay on the table, by the side of a mug of toddy, a short pipe, in which the tobacco was yet burning, and a Prayer-book.

Among the other pursuits of Richard, it was a passion to keep a register of all passing events; and his diary, which was written in the manner of a journal, or log-book, embraced not only such circumstances as affected himself, but observations on the weather, and all the occurrences of the family, and frequently of the village. Since his appointment to the office of Sheriff, and his consequent absences from home, he had employed Benjamin to make memoranda, on a slate, of whatever might be thought worth remembering, which, on his return, were regularly transferred to the journal, with proper notations of the time, manner, and other little particulars. There was, to be sure, one material objection to the clerkship of Benjamin, which the ingenuity of no one but Richard could have overcome. The steward read nothing but his Prayer-book, and that only in particular parts, and by the aid of a good deal of spelling, and some misnomers; but he could not form a single letter with a pen. This would have been an insuperable bar to journalizing, with most men; but Richard invented a kind of hieroglyphical character, which was intended to note all the ordinary occurrences of a day, such as how the wind blew, whether the sun shone, or whether it rained, the hours, &c.; and for the extraordinary, after giving certain elementary lectures on the subject, the Sheriff was obliged to trust to the ingenuity of the Major-domo. The reader will at once perceive, that it was to this chronicle that Benjamin pointed, instead of directly answering the Sheriff's interrogatory.

When Mr, Jones had drunk a glass of the tod-


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 be thrown on the general finance of the colony, it will be a drain on other forms of trade, without in any way improving them; in fact, during its construction, it will absorb labour from the general trade-oil, rubber, and timber—and, if it extensively increases the gold-mining industry, it will keep the labour tied to it chronically, to the disadvantage of other trades.

Lagos, our next Crown Colony, is a very rich possession, and under Sir Alfred Moloney, who discovered the use of the Kicksia Africana as a rubber tree, and Sir Gilbert Carter, who fostered the industry and opened the trade roads, sprang in a few years into a phenomenal prosperity. Then came the French aggression on its hinterland, the seizing of Nikki, which was one of those foci of trade routes, though possibly, as many have said, a non-fertile bit of country in itself. To give you some idea of the bound up in prosperity made by Lagos, the exports in 1892 were £577,083; in 1895, £985,595. The main advance has been in rubber, which in 1896 was exported from Lagos to the value of £347,721. Early in this year, however, the state of the Lagos trade was considered so unsatisfactory that a local commission to inquire into the causes of this state of affairs was appointed.

The publication of the Government Trade Returns for 1897 supported the long grumble that had been going on about the bad state of trade in Lagos, the imports for 1897 showing a decrease on those of 1895 by £67,474. The Board of Trade Journal, quoting from the Lagos Weekly Record of February 28th, 1898, says, "An examination of the export returns affords a clue to the direction of such decrease. It is to be noted that notwithstanding that the export of rubber in 1897 shows an excess of

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 ſtriueth to beare downward the member or lymme. And ſo of this double contrary mouing one heauing vpward, and another thruſting downward, a tremblyng or quaking of the lymmes is ofte ingendered. And at laſt if this vertue of ruling be all ouercome, then the palſie or death hath maſterie in ſuch bodyes. And therefore the wiſe mans counſayle is beſt, that ſaith: Hurt not thy ſelfe vpon all manner of meate. Many meats haue diuers taaſts, that breedeth ſundry operations, & is the cauſe of incurable diſeaſes, in nice and daintie mouthed bodies: for in many manner meates is diuers ſickneſſe. Alſo too much ſléeping, breedeth the ſame euill and ſickneſſe in the body. For in ſléepe the vertues are féebled, and the working of féeling, and of kinde be ſtrengthened within. And ſo the gates being cloſed without, heate is comforted and ſtrengthened within, and draweth too many humors,  which it may not diſſolue neither waſt.

And then great ſuperfluitie hauing the maſterie, the which kinds can not rule, then of neceſſitie, followeth death and ſtiffeling. Alſo licoureſnes of meates waſteth the powers, & lecherie the ſenſes: Theſe bee two delectable Diuelles, that kill the bodye, beſide the ſoule. As it is ſéene in them that ſléepe after that they haue taken medicines, and alſo in them that be newly let bloud. In them that wake too much, the contrary cauſe lykewiſe worketh. For in them the humours & the ſpirites be waſted too much, and therfore oft death threateneth or menaceth. Alſo the ſame cauſe of ſtifling, is in them, that eate and drinke beyond meaſure: and the ſame reaſon of fayling, is in them faſt more then nature can beare: and be conſumed and waſted. Alſo be that trauayleth ouer meaſure, deſtroyeth & waſteth himſelfe by too ſtrong heate, that waſteth the humours too ſore. In them that reſt too much, the cauſe is contrary: For in them drawing too of moiſture, paſſeth meaſure. And there is none euaporation, neither deliueraunce of the ſuperfluities, neither ſubtiliation of the ſpirites. And therefore neceſſarilye the ſuperfluitie of moyſture is diſpoſed to rotting and corruption. In theſe manners, and in many other infinite, the elementall qualities be in theyr kindly workings hindred. As it is knowen by the foreſayd reaſons that we haue ſhortly gathered of the words of Conſtantine in Pantegni, and of Galen in Commento Aphoriſio, Hippocratis, & Epidimiarum, of euills commeth by ouermuch moyſture. And therfore we will paſſe ouer, and deſcribe the properties of humours, that be compoſed of theſe qualyties: of the which euerye bodye is made, that hath a ſoule and feelyng, either reaſon.

¶Of humours, and of the generation, effect and working of them. Cap. 6.
umour is a ſubſtaunce actuallye moyſt, by ioyning of elementall qualities, and is apt to nouriſh and to feede the members, and to comfort the working thereof kindly, or caſually to let the workings thereof. For humour is the firſt principall materiall of bodies that haue féeling, and chiefe helpe in theyr working, and that becauſe of nouriſhing and féeding. Conſtantinus ſaith, That the humours be called the children of the Elementes. For euerye of the humours commeth of the qualytie of the Elements. And ther be foure humours, Bloud, Fleame, Cholar, and Melancholy: and are called ſimple in compariſon to the members, though in reſpect of the Elements, whoſe children they bée, they be compoſed. Theſe foure humors in quantitie and qualytie, obſeruing euenneſſe, with due proportion, make perfect and kéepe in due ſtate of health, all bodyes hauing bloud: lyke as contrariwiſe, by their vnequalneſſe or infection they ingender and cauſe ſickneſſe. Theſe humors be néedful to the making of the bodye, and to the ruling and kéeping thereof: and alſo to reſtore what is loſt in the body, as ſaith . The body runneth and droppeth, as in ſweating, ſpitting & other ſuch. Alſo alteration chaungeth oft cold into heate and returneth.

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 £13,367 above that exported in 1895, yet in the aggregate of the total exports of the two years that of 1897 shows a decrease of £193,745; this is due to the great falling off which is perceptible in the palm oil and kernel trade, which together show a decrease in 1897 of £162,580 as compared with the quantities exported in 1895; while as compared with the exports in 1896 the decrease amounts to £114,773. The returns show a steady and increasing decline in the exports of these products, for while the decrease in 1896 as compared with 1895 was only £47,807, the decrease had risen in 1897 as com- pared with the previous year to £114,773, as already intimated, which implies that there has been a further falling off of the trade to the extent of nearly £67,000. This manifest excessive diminution in what must be regarded as the staple commodities of the trade is undoubtedly a serious indication, for though these commodities come under the classification of jungle products they are not liable to exhaustion as are the rubber or timber industries, and hence they form the only reliable commodities upon which the trade must expand. The dislocation of the labour system in the hinterland is no doubt responsible in a large measure for the falling off in the yield of these products, while in many instances they have been abandoned for the more remunerative rubber business. But, be the circumstances what they may, it is evident that there has been an actual decrease of trade to the extent of over £114,000."

This was the state of affairs the local committee was appointed to deal with. Its discussions were long and careful. I will not attempt to drag you through its final report, which a grossly ungrateful public in Lagos sniffed at because

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 dy, he brought forth, from its secret place, his proper journal, and, seating himself by the table, he prepared to transfer the contents of the slate to the paper, at the same time that he appeased his curiosity. Benjamin laid one hand on the back of the Sheriff's chair, in a familiar manner, while he kept the other at liberty, to make use of a fore-finger, that was bent like some of his own characters, as an index to point out his meaning.

The first thing referred to by the Sheriff was the diagram of a compass, that was cut in one corner of the slate for permanent use. The cardinal points were plainly marked on it, and all the usual divisions were indicated in such a manner, that no man who had ever steered a ship could mistake them.

"Oh!" said the Sheriff, settling himself down comfortably in his chair—"you'd the wind south-east, I see, all last night; I thought it would have blown up rain."

"Devil the drop, sir," said Benjamin; "I believe that the scuttle-butt up aloft is emptied, for there hasn't so much water fell in the county, for the last three weeks, as would float Indian John's canoe, and that draws just one inch nothing, light."

"Well, but didn't the wind change here this morning? there was a change where I was."

"To be sure it did, Squire; and haven't I logged it as a shift of wind."

"I don't see where, Benjamin; I"

"Don't see!" interrupted the steward, a little crustily; "an't there a mark ag'in east-and-by-nothe-half-nothe, with sum'mat like a rising sun at the end of it, to show 'twas in the morning watch?"

"Yes, yes, that is very legible; but where is the change noted?"


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 "Where! why doesn't it see this here tea-kettle, with a mark run from the spout straight, or mayhap a little crooked or so, into west-and-by-southe-half-southe? now I calls this a shift of wind, Squire. Well, do you see this here boar's head that you made for me, alongside of the compass"—

"Ay, ay—Boreas—I see. Why, you've drawn lines from its mouth, extending from one of your marks to the other."

"It's no fault of mine, Squire Dickens; 'tis your d—d climate. The wind has been at all them there marks this very day; and that's all round the compass, except a little matter of an Irishman's hurricane at meridium, which you'll find marked right up and down. Now I've known a sow-wester blow for three weeks, in the Channel, with a clean drizzle in which you might wash your face and hands, without the trouble of hauling in water from alongside."

"Very well, Benjamin," said the Sheriff, writing in his journal; "I believe I have caught the idea. Oh! here's a cloud over the rising sun;—so you had it hazy in the morning?"

"Ay, ay, sir," said Benjamin.

"Ah! it's Sunday, and here are the marks for the length of the sermon—one, two, three, four—What! did Mr. Grant preach forty minutes!"

"Ay, sum'mat like it; it was a good half-hour by my own glass, and then there was the time lost in turning it, and some little allowance for leeway in not being over smart about it."

"But, Benjamin, this is as long as a Presbyterian sermon; you never could have been ten minutes in turning the glass!"

"Why, d'ye see, Squire, the parson was very solemn, and I just closed my eyes in order to think the better with myself, just the same as you'd


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 it merely seemed carefully to reproduce every one's opinion on the causes of the falling off of trade and to agree with it solemnly; but, like the rest of the local world, it made no sweeping suggestion of means whereby things could be altered. Since the committee, however, was formed, there has been a greater interest taken in expenditure, healthy in its way, but too often ignoring the fact, that it is not so much the amount of money that is spent governmentally that constitutes waste, but the things on which it is expended. Large sums have been spent in Lagos, I am informed, on building a Government House that every valuable Governor ought to be paid to keep out of, so unhealthy is its situation, and again on bridging a lagoon that has no particular sound bottom to it worth mentioning.

That such forms of expenditure are not the necessary grooves into which a place like Lagos is driven in order to get rid of its money is undoubted. The local press at any rate indicates other grooves; for example here is a cheerful little paragraph:

"A propos of what was said in your last issue about the grave-diggers, there is no doubt that something should be done to relieve the men from the strain of work to which they are continuously subjected. The demands of a constantly increasing death rate, which has caused the cemeteries to be enlarged, make it necessary that the number of grave-diggers should be increased. Besides, these men are poorly paid for the work they do. Of the twenty grave-diggers, six are paid at the rate of 1s. per diem, and the rest at the rate of 10d. They have no holidays, either, like other people. While the Government labourers, of whom there is a host, may skulk half their time, the hard-working

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 put in the dead-lights to make all snug, and when I opened them ag'in I found the congregation were getting under weigh for home, so I calculated the ten minutes would cover the lee-way after the glass was out. It was only some such matter as a cat's nap."

"Oh, ho! master Benjamin, you were asleep, were you! but I'll set down no such slander against an orthodox divine." Richard wrote twenty-nine minutes in his journal, and continued—"Why, what's this you've got opposite ten o'clock, A. M.? a full moon! had you a moon visible by day! I have heard of such portents before now, but eh! what's this alongside of it? an hour-glass?"

"That!" said Benjamin, looking coolly over the Sheriff's shoulder, and rolling the tobacco about in his mouth with a jocular air; "why that's a small matter of my own. It's no moon, Squire, but only Betty Hollister's face; for, d'ye see, sir, hearing all the same as if she had got up a new cargo of Jamaiky from the river, I called in as I was going to the church this morning—ten, A. M. was it? just the time—and tried a glass; and so I logged it, to put me in mind of calling to pay her like an honest man."

"That was it, was it?" said the Sheriff, with some displeasure at this innovation on his memoranda; "and could you not make a better glass than this? it looks like a death's head and an hour-glass."

"Why, as I liked the stuff, Squire," returned the steward, "I turned in, homeward bound, and took t'other glass, which I set down at the bottom of the first, and that gives the thing the shape it has. But as I was there ag'in to-night, and paid for the three at once, your honour may as well run the sponge over the whole business."


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 grave-digger is at it from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day, Sundays included, for the Grim Reaper is ever busy. The Keeper of the graveyards, also, has much to do for the paltry salary he receives. I would earnestly appeal to the authorities to do something to raise the burden of this over-worked staff." So would I, but rather in the direction of giving the "Grim Reaper" and the grave-diggers fewer people to bury. I must also give you another beautiful little bit of local colour, although it suggests further expenditure. "It is satisfactory to note that the Chamber of Commerce intends to take up the question of the swamp near the petroleum magazine. Since the Government made the causeway leading to the dead-house and cut off the tidal inflow, the upper portion of the swamp has been formed into a most noxious disease-breeding sink, into which refuse of all kinds is thrown, the stagnant waters and refuse combining, under the effects of the sun, to emit a most formidable pestilential effluvia. In the interests of humanity something should be done to abate this nuisance."

However, I leave these local questions of Lagos town. They just present a pretty picture of the difficulties that surround dealing with a place that has by nature swamps, that must have dead-houses, grave-diggers, and extensive cemetery accommodation, and that is peopled by natives who will instinctively throw refuse into any hole; with evidently a large death rate in the native population and a published death rate in whites of 153 per thousand. Let us now return to the higher finance.

"The total expenditure of Lagos in 1888 amounted to

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 "I will buy you a slate for your own affairs, Benjamin," said the Sheriff; "for I don't like to have the journal marked over in this manner."

"You needn't you needn't, Squire; for, seeing that I was likely to trade often with the woman while this barrel lasted, I've opened a fair account with Betty, and she keeps the marks on the back of her bar door, and I keeps the tally on this here bit of a stick."

As Benjamin concluded he produced a piece of wood, on which five very honest, large notches were apparent. The Sheriff cast his eyes on this new leger, for a moment, and continued—

"What have we here! Saturday, two P. M.—why here's a whole family piece! two wine-glasses up-side-down!"

"That's two women; the one this a-way is Miss 'Lizzy, and t'other is the parson's young'un."

"Cousin Bess and Miss Grant!" exclaimed the Sheriff, in amazement; "why, what have they to do with my journal?"

"They'd enough to do to get out of the jaws of that there painter, or panther," said the immoveable steward. "This here thingum'y, Squire, that maybe looks sum'mat like a rat, is the beast, d'ye see; and this here t'other thing, keel uppermost, is poor old Brave, who died nobly, all the same as an admiral fighting for his king and country; and that there"—

"Scarecrow," interrupted Richard.

"Ay, mayhap it do look a little wild or so," continued the steward; "but to my judgment, Squire, it's the best imager I've made, seeing it's most like the man himself;—well, that's Natty Bumppo, who shot this here painter, that killed that there dog, who would have eaten or done worse to them here young ladies."


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 £62,735 15s. 11d. The expenditure has risen in 1898 to £192,760, which gives an excess of £130,025. The total cost of the staff in 1888 was £15,932, while the present cost amounts to £41,604, which is an increase of £25,672. This increase, apart from the augmentation in the Governor's salary, is mainly in respect to the following departments:— Secretariat, Harbour Department, Constabulary and Police, and the Public Works Department. The cost of working the secretariat has been increased by £1,074, due to the following additional officers:—Two assistant colonial secretaries, a chief clerk, and a first clerk. It is well known that in 1888, when the department cost the colony about one-half its present expenses as regards the European staff, the work was performed with efficiency and despatch; while at present it is not only difficult to get business got through, but, what is more, if the business is not followed up with watchful care, it will become lost in the super-abundance of assistants and clerks who crowd the department, and the practical expression of whose work is more discernible on the public revenue than anything else." The Lagos Record goes on to say, "There is room for retrenchment in the matter of expenditure on account of the European official staff." I do not follow it here. It is room for retrenchment in mere routine workers, black and white, that is wanted, and the liberation of the Europeans to do work worth their risking their lives in West Africa for. The percentage of black officials, mainly clerks—excellent and faithful to their duties—is increasing in all our colonies there too rapidly; and the existence of poorly paid but numerous posts under Government with a certain amount of prestige, is a dangerous allurement to

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 "And what the devil does all this mean?" cried Richard, impatiently.

"Mean!" echoed Benjamin; "it's as true as the Boadishey's log-book"

He was interrupted by the Sheriff, who put a few direct questions to him, that obtained more intelligible answers, by which means he became possessed of a tolerably correct idea of the truth. When the wonder, and, we must do Richard the justice to say, the feelings also, that were created by this narrative, had in some degree subsided, the Sheriff turned his eyes again on his journal, where more inexplicable hieroglyphics met his view.

"What have we here!" he cried; "two men boxing! has there been a breach of the peace? ah! that's the way, the moment my back is turned"

"That's the Judge and young Master Edwards," interrupted the steward, very cavalierly.

"How! 'duke fighting with Oliver! what the devil has got into you all? more things have happened within the last thirty-six hours, than in the preceding six months."

"Yes, it's so indeed, Squire," returned the steward; "I've known a smart chase, and a fight at the tail of it, where less has been logged than I've got on that there slate. Howsomnever, they didn't come to facers, only passed a little jaw fore and aft."

"Explain! explain!" cried Richard—"it was about the mines, ha! ay, ay, I see it, I see it; here is a man with a pick on his shoulder. So you heard it all, Benjamin?"

"Why yes, it was about their minds, I believe, Squire," returned the steward; "and by what I can learn, they spoke them pretty plainly to one another. Indeed, I may say that I overheard a


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bent over the wheel.

"I'm going closer," he said. "We'll make absolutely sure of this."

He altered the course of the boat so that it would intercept the other craft, at the speed they were going. Then he turned up his coat collar and drew his cap lower over his eyes.

"If it's the same boat and if the same men are in it, we should be safe enough as long as they don't recognize us. They saw us that day, but they've never seen the Sleuth. We'll get as close to them as we can."

But the other craft had increased its speed. It was a powerful boat and a high curl of foam now rose from its bows as it plunged through the waves in a rapid flight toward the mainland in the distance. The roar of the engine was borne to the boys' ears on the breeze.

"We're going to lose them," muttered Frank. "They're too far ahead of us, unless we want to cut in and meet them right near the land."

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151 Mr. Sofer. Okay.

Are we going to be afforded an opportunity to review the transcript of this? And how will that occur?

Yes. The House rules provide that a draft transcript is generated. We will give it to you—or make it available to you. I don't believe that we're able to provide an electronic copy. It may be sort of an old-school, you have to review it and mark changes.

But before it's final, yes, Greg, you'll have an opportunity—

Mr. Sofer. Okay.

—and Mr. Patel as well, to look at it.

Mr. Sofer. And approximately what kind of timeframe are we looking at?

. Shortly.

Mr. Sofer. Days? Weeks? Months?

Yeah, we—days, I believe.

Mr. Sofer. Okay.

. It should be in the coming days, although we're generating a lot of work for the court reporters, and—

Mr. Sofer. Understood.

—I don't want to commit for them.

But, bottom line, just to finish this, before the transcript is finalized, you will have had a chance to read it and make any edits, clarifications that you want.

Mr. Sofer. Okay.

Can we have your assurances that we won't be called back here?

No, unfortunately, we can't give you that assurance. We are still waiting on document production that is tied up in litigation.


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152 Our hope is not. Let me just, from the start, say that our hope is that we will not. But it just sort of depends on whether or not some of that production or other information developed would prompt that.

Mr. Sofer. I just want the record to reflect that I don't believe we refused to answer a single question here today and that we didn't assert any kind of arguments about privilege. We've made our statements about them.

But I want the record to be clear that my client sat here for 4 hours, answered every single question to the best of his ability. And, to the extent that that's considered when deciding whether to bring us back, that we've distinguished ourselves from other folks who have been subpoenaed by the committee and came in here voluntarily to do what we said we were going to do.

So I hope that the committee will consider that before dragging us back here, which, obviously—and, again, if there are other questions and you want to communicate them to us, we're happy to do that. But we don't want to come back for another round of the deposition.

. Appreciate that.

Mr. Glabe. And let me ask the question a different way, which is: Understanding that none of us can predict the future or what the committee might potentially be interested in in the future, is it fair to say and are you able to represent that the terms of the subpoena issued on September 23rd have been satisfied?

The deposition needs to remain open.

I appreciate, Mr. Sofer, your statement about there has not been any privilege assertion that has prevented an answer.

That said, this is an ongoing—fast-moving and ongoing investigation. There may be additional documents or additional witnesses that provide information that prompt us


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153 to come back. It could be that we can come back to counsel and answer those questions without the need to have it an on-the-record proceeding. I just don't know.

Mr. Sofer. Okay. Well, pursuant to our previous discussions, we'd request that you withdraw the subpoena. And, again, the idea was—and the reason, as I understood it, why you did not withdraw the subpoena was because of these privilege issues. We've not asserted the privilege. I think you can see that we've answered all of these questions.

So I'd request that the committee withdraw the subpoena now, the one that's already been issued, number one, and, number two, to the extent there are further questions, that they not be sought by a subpoena.

Okay. We can't withdraw it now. We may need to reconvene, and the compulsion is necessary for that. It is not our current intention to do that.

And all I can do is tell you that we are moving fast and do not want to belabor this. I appreciate the desire for completion. We share that. I just don't know what is in the archives production or with other—

The Witness. Can I just say—

Yes?

Mr. Glabe. Let me say one thing. And, hopefully, this is the last thing I have to say, at least on the record this afternoon.

I understand you're wanting to prepare for contingencies. It was also the case that, when we had a discussion, lengthy discussion, about our client's willingness and ability to appear voluntarily and withdraw the subpoena before the interview, Mr. Heaphy, you stated in a phone call on November 22nd that one of the reasons that you weren't able or willing to withdraw the subpoena is because it was unacceptable to the committee to have multiple proceedings, that you did not have the time for multiple


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154 interviews, and, therefore, you wanted to get everything done in one interview so that any privilege issues could be adjudicated in or immediately after that interview.

There were no privilege issues raised today, no questions that our client refused to answer, and so, therefore, I don't understand why we can't close out the September 23rd subpoena, particularly understanding that you said that it was your wish not to have two separate proceedings.

It remains my wish not to have two separate proceedings. I just need to keep the option open to compel Mr. Patel's return if that becomes necessary. I hope it does not.

Mr. Glabe. And if you need to compel Mr. Patel to return, you could issue a subpoena.

. Yeah.

Mr. Glabe. But I think, in light of the participation that our client showed, it would be the respectful, appropriate, and professional thing to do to withdraw or otherwise represent that the September 23rd subpoena is closed out, completed, and satisfied.

Yeah. I appreciate your perspective, but we just need to keep the subpoena in place and leave this open. Our hope is that it does not have any practical—

The Witness. Could you give us 1 second?

Mr. Sofer. Well, just for the record again, I don't think that's supported by our previous conversations. And, again, I don't want to repeat myself, but, as Mr. Glabe points out, the reasons that their subpoena wasn't withdrawn—you know, we had email traffic about that between us—those have been removed at this juncture.

And we are willing to provide information to the extent that we can, and I think we've shown ourselves to not in any way obfuscate the process. So all of the


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155 justification for keeping the subpoena in place is gone, in my judgment.

And I just don't think it's fair. It's not fair to keep Mr. Patel under the coercive power of potential of being subpoenaed and dragged back in here, given what he's done here. It's not good for the committee, not good for us. When you have a cooperative witness and you keep their thumb on their neck, it's not right.

There's no thumb on anyone's neck.

Mr. Sofer. Well, the subpoena—you know, you know this as well as I do, that a subpoena, for anybody, is a—you know, you said this a couple times—a big deal.

. Yeah.

Mr. Sofer. It's a big deal. Particularly in this particular context, when the whole world is watching it, it's highly problematic. It doesn't make him feel good, it doesn't make us feel good, it probably doesn't make you feel good.

I'd just ask you to reconsider and think about it.

Yeah.

Mr. Sofer. You don't have to answer the question now, but please think about the fact that we came in here in good faith, answered all these questions, did not assert a privilege, and are simply requesting that the subpoena be withdrawn or considered to be fulfilled.

If you find some need at some later date, as far as I know, there's nothing that stops you from issuing another subpoena.

Yeah. I completely understand. I don't—staff doesn't have the ability unilaterally to withdraw the subpoena. I will convey that request—

Mr. Sofer. I appreciate that.

—to Chairman Thompson and the committee. But I can represent that it is certainly not their intention to keep anybody's—the


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104 "That will only make them suspicious."

"Yes, I guess we’d better let them go."

Still, he did not give up the attempt just then, opening the throttle so that the Sleuth was racing along at top speed. But the other boat had the advantage, and cut across their course with a quarter of a mile to spare. Joe gazed through the binoculars, striving to identify the two men.

"No use," he remarked, at last. "The fellow at the wheel is turned away from us, and the other man is bending down in the boat so I can't see his face."

"Is it the same boat?"

"I can't be positive. But I think so. It certainly looks very much like it."

"I'm almost sure. Of course, there might be lots of other motorboats just like it—but I've got a hunch that it's the same craft."

"What would it be doing at Blacksnake Island? There's no doubt that it came from there."

"That's for us to find out. We'll let them go on to the mainland. Then we'll circle back and go up the other side of the island."

In a short time the other craft disappeared from view, entering a small cove some distance down the coast, and Frank turned their boat about and headed toward Blacksnake Island again. They approached it from the seaward

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 small matter of it myself, seeing that the windows was open, and I hard by. But this here is no pick, but an anchor on a man's shoulder; and here's the other fluke down his back, maybe a little too close, which signifies that the lad has got under way and left his moorings."

"Has Edwards left the house?" demanded Richard, peremptorily.

"He has," said the steward.

Richard pursued this advantage, and, after a long and close examination, he succeeded in getting out of Benjamin all that he knew, not only concerning the misunderstanding, but of the attempt to search the hut, and Hiram's discomfiture. The Sheriff was no sooner possessed of these facts, which Benjamin related with all possible tenderness to the Leather-stocking, than, snatching up his hat, and bidding the astonished steward to secure the doors and go to his bed, he left the house.

For at least five minutes after Richard disappeared, Benjamin stood with his arms a-kimbo, and his eyes fastened on the door; when, having collected his astonished faculties, he prepared to execute the orders he had received.

It has been already said, that the "court of common pleas and general sessions of the peace," or, as it is commonly called, the "county court," over which Judge Temple presided, held one of its stated sessions on the following morning. The attendants of Richard were officers who had come to the village as much to discharge their usual duties at this court, as to escort the prisoners; and the Sheriff knew their habits too well, not to feel confident he should find most, if not all of them, in the public room of the gaol, discussing the qualities of the keeper's liquors. Accordingly he held his way, through the silent streets


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Rh side and drew in as close to the island as they dared. The rocky bluffs were lonely and forbidding, seeming to offer no available landing place.

"We'll go right around it. If Chet and Biff are there we should be able to see their boat or a fire or some sign of them," said Frank, half questioningly, to his brother.

"After seeing that other motorboat, I'm pretty sure we won't see any sign of them at all. I'm pretty well satisfied that those men kidnapped them and brought them here. And if they did, you may be sure they'll be well hidden."

"We'll circle the island anyway, and if we don't see anything we'll land and make a search of the place."

But making a circuit of the island took longer than the boys expected. Blacksnake Island was bigger than it had first appeared. It was almost a mile in length, and correspondingly wide—a great, swampy tract of forbidding marsh at one end, rising to higher ground and desolate rocks at the other. On the swampy side there were sinister little creeks, dead bushes half inundated, logs floating about in the black water. Frank and Joe caught glimpses of triangular black heads forging slowly through the water here and there.

"The blacksnakes!" Frank exclaimed.

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156 thumb on anybody's neck, to belabor this. Our hope is that this is the one and only time that we ask Mr. Patel to honor the subpoena.

I will convey the request to withdraw it. It would, to some extent, not matter, because if we need—

Mr. Sofer. Withdraw it or officially consider it as having been satisfied.

Mr. Glabe. Or allow us to represent the—

I just need to check with the chairman on that, and will do so.

Let me just say one thing, not about the subpoena issue, but we have asked every witness, and I want to ask you also, as part of this—part of our mandate, prospectively, going forward, is offer recommendations, what Mr. Patel thinks as far as what could be—could've prevented January 6th from happening.

The Witness. I'll speak to counsel.

Mr. Sofer. Yeah, that's something, I think, that we could—would happily discuss and potentially submit to you, the committee, in writing.

Great.

The Witness. Can I have 1 second?

[Discussion off the record.]

The Witness. Thank you all for your time.

Great.

Mr. Sofer. Thanks. Appreciate it.

Okay. Thanks.

Thanks.

[Whereupon, at 4:15 p.m., the deposition was concluded.]


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 of the village, directly to the small and insecure building, that contained all the unfortunate debtors, and some of the criminals of the county, and where justice was administered to such unwary applicants as were so silly as to throw away two dollars, in order to obtain one from their neighbours. The arrival of four malefactors in the custody of a dozen officers, was an event, at that day, in Templeton; and when the Sheriff reached the gaol, he found every indication that his subordinates intended to make a night of it.

The nod of the Sheriff brought two of his deputies to the door, who in their turn drew off six or seven of the constables. With this force Richard led the way through the village, towards the bank of the lake, undisturbed by any noise, except the barking of one or two curs, who were alarmed by the measured tread of the party, and by the low murmurs that run through their own numbers, as a few cautious questions and answers were exchanged, relative to the object of their expedition. When they had crossed the little bridge of hewn logs that was thrown over the Susquehanna, they left the highway, and struck into that field which had been the scene of the victory over the pigeons. From this they followed their leader into the low bushes of pines and chestnuts which had sprung up along the shores of the lake, where the plough had not succeeded the fall of the trees, and soon entered the deep forest itself. Here Richard paused, and collected his troop around him.

"I have required your assistance, my friends," he said, in a low voice, "in order to arrest Nathaniel Bumppo, commonly called the Leather-stocking. He has assaulted a magistrate, and resisted the execution of a search-warrant, by threatening the life of a constable with his rifle.


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Rh losophical works, such as his "Deeds of God" (Miphaloth Elohim). are of less value, they are borrowed in the main from Maimonides. In his Talmudical writings, notably his "Salvation of his Anointed" (Yeshnoth Meshicho), Abarbanel displays a lighter and more original touch than in his philosophical treatises. But his works on the Bible are his greatest literary achievement. Besides the merits already indicated, these books have another important excellence. He was the first Jew to make extensive use of Christian commentaries. He must be credited with the discovery that the study of the Bible may be unsectarian, and that all who hold the Bible in honor may join hands in elucidating it.

A younger contemporary of Abarbanel was also an apostle of the same view. This was Elias Levita (1469-1549). He was a Grammarian, or Massorite, i. e. a student. of the tradition (Massorah) as to the He-


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 In short, my friends, he has set an example of rebellion to the laws, and has become a kind of outlaw. He is suspected of other misdemeanours and offences against private rights; and I have this night taken on myself, by the virtue of my office of sheriff, to arrest the said Bumppo, and bring him to the county gaol, that he may be present and forthcoming to answer to these heavy charges before the court to-morrow morning. In executing this duty, my friends and fellow citizens, you are to use courage and discretion. Courage, that you may not be daunted by any lawless attempts that this man may make, with his rifle and his dogs, to oppose you; and discretion, which here means caution and prudence, that he may not escape from this sudden attack—and—for other good reasons that I need not mention. You will form yourselves in a complete circle around his hut, and at the word 'advance,' called aloud by me, you will rush forward, and, without giving the criminal time for deliberation, enter his dwelling by force and make him your prisoner. Spread yourselves for this purpose, while I shall descend to the shore with a deputy, to take charge of that point; and all communications must be made directly to me, under the bank in front of the hut, where I shall station myself, and remain in order to receive them."

This speech, which Richard had been studying during his walk, had the effect that all similar performances produce, of bringing the dangers of the expedition immediately before the eyes of his forces. The men divided, some plunging deeper into the forest, in order to gain their stations without giving an alarm, and others continuing to advance, at a gait that would allow the whole party to get in order; but all devising the best plans to repulse the


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106 Once the motorboat passed within a few yards of one of these black reptiles. Fascinated, the boys watched the ugly black head that projected above the surface, and they could see the long, sinuous body writhing beneath the water as the snake swam toward the fetid marsh.

"There must be hundreds of them on that island."

"They're dangerous, too. I've read about them. A bite from one of them means your finish."

There were fewer snakes on the rocky side of the island and, after they had made the circuit without seeing any sign of human life, the boys decided to make a landing.

"Seeing that motorboat leaving here makes me believe some one is around," declared Frank. "I won't be satisfied until I find out for sure."

"We won't stay here all night?"

"It all depends. If we're satisfied that the island is deserted, we'll leave; but if we think we haven't searched thoroughly enough, we'll stay and hunt around again to-morrow. It'll take a few hours to give the place a thorough going-over."

"How about the snakes? Won't it be dangerous staying here all night?"

"Oh, we'll find some place where they can't

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 attack of a dog, or escape a rifle-bullet. It was a moment of dread expectation and interest.

When the Sheriff thought time enough had elapsed for the different divisions of his force to arrive at their stations, he raised his voice in the silence of the forest, and shouted the watch-word. The sounds played among the arched branches of the trees in hollow cadences; but when the last sinking tone was lost on the ear, in place of the expected howls of the dogs, no other noises were returned but the crackling of torn branches and dried sticks, as they yielded before the advancing steps of the officers. Even this soon ceased, as if by a common consent, when, the curiosity and impatience of the Sheriff getting the complete ascendency over his discretion, he rushed up the bank, and in a moment stood on the little piece of cleared ground in front of the spot where Natty had so long lived. To his utter amazement, in place of the hut, he saw only its smouldering ruins!

The party gradually drew, together about the heap of ashes and ends of smoking logs, while a dim flame in the centre of the ruin, which still found fuel to feed its lingering life, threw its pale light, flickering with the passing currents of the air, around the circle, now showing a face with eyes fixed in astonishment, and then glancing to another countenance, leaving the former shaded in the obscurity of night. Not a voice was raised in inquiry, nor an exclamation made in astonishment. The transition from excitement to disappointment was too powerful in its effects for speech, and even Richard lost the use of an organ that was seldom known to fail him.

The whole group were yet in the fulness of their surprise, when a tall form stalked from the gloom into the circle, treading down the hot ashes