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 Henderson had not been able to clamber up the crumbling adobe to lift his eyes to the little window. But buried as he was behind four feet of adobe wall, the pulsation of the excitement without came to him. Something of importance had happened, or was threatening, at Don Abrahan's house that day.

Shortly after Simon's brief visit things began to assume an extraordinary quietude in the courtyard. Henderson heard the servants come and go, their feet sounding faster than their common pace. Sometimes they stopped under his window, voices lowered as men hush them when they speak of the dying or the dead.

Henderson believed only one thing could account for such an atmosphere of flurry and fear. News must have come of the arrival of the United States warships at Monterey. Toberman had expected them; the outbreak of war between the two nations would simplify their course, set aside and make unnecessary whatever pretext the friends of annexation had evolved for their action. If the ships had come, Don Abrahan would be thinking some serious things about John Toberman that morning.

Simon returned to take away the breakfast dishes after the sun had found the little slit in the wall and mounted on, withdrawing its strong illumination, which served only to reveal the hopelessness and misery of that cramped place with more distressing distinctness. It was better without the sun.


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 "So you have eaten everything, like a dog," said Simon, viewing the cleaned dishes. "It is a good thing for me that you have found heart to eat, Mr. Gabriel, for Roberto would blame me with having licked your dishes myself if you happened to faint at the whipping-post when he puts the sharp rawhide to your back this afternoon. There will be no dinner; that is Don Roberto's order. Maybe just a little pinch of hunger helps a man suffer, as long as he is strong in the legs to stand. Will you smoke, Mr. Gabriel?"

"I would smoke, Simon, if I had some tobacco," Gabriel replied, no more feeling apparent in his tone against this overbearing, vain, bragging creature than if their former relations had not been changed.

"Your pipe, your watch and your money I put back in your pockets at Don Roberto's order," Simon regretfully confessed. "If you have lost them on the way it is not my fault, although I told Roberto you would do it. But we were not robbing you, he said; it must never be charged against him that he stooped to rob a runaway low Yankee who carried hides on his head to a ship."

"I didn't lose them, Simon. Have you some tobacco there?"

"Yes. If you will promise me not to set fire to the straw and strangle yourself on smoke to cheat Roberto out of his revenge for the blow you gave him, I'll let you have it, with fire to set it going in your pipe."

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 "I promise you, Simon."

Simon passed tobacco through the bars of the door. As for fire, he never was without it on the tip of his cigarette. This he supplied when Henderson had filled his pipe.

"The olla, Gabriel," he requested, pointing to the jar of heavy earthenware that stood out of his reach.

"Permit me to keep it, Simon. If I am not to have anything more to eat, permit me to drink, at least."

"Oh, very well."

Simon was in no hurry now. The flurry of excitement that had moved his languid limbs in such unexampled haste a few hours past had calmed. He stood leaning against the thick wall between the outer and inner doors of the cell, his eyes half closed in the comfortable contemplation of his own importance and of the things he knew.

"But what use is a watch to a dead man?" he inquired.

He turned, blowing a long trail of smoke from his nostrils, his eyes drawn a bit closer, as if to ponder his own question in judicial astuteness.

"Very little, Simon."

"And money—can a dead man spend money?"

"I never heard of one doing it."

"Nor I," Simon agreed.

There seemed to be no personal allusion in these philosophical speculations. Simon appeared to be far from the desire of a watch or money for him-


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 self. He stood with shoulders against the wall, lounging easily, chin lifted, cigarette drooping in his mouth. It seemed, rather, as if he had seen watch and money take flight like a covey of quail, and followed their course to see where they would light.

"Don Roberto has had old Vincente nail a to the whipping-post, to stretch you out like they spread the thief on the cross beside Our Señor," Simon told him. "He is going to flog you there this afternoon. He will never stop, when he sees the blood spring, till you hang dead in the ropes. Jesus! it will be a sight to see!"

Henderson was standing by, smoking calmly. Simon glanced at him slyly, turning his eyeballs between the thin slits of his lids, his head held as before. Smoke was trickling out of his nostrils and mouth, as if he bled in fiery compassion over the cruelty he had pictured.

"Don Roberto is a man of fine humor," Simon continued, turning now to look at Henderson squarely, smiling as a man smiles when he approaches a pleasant thing.

"You know him better than I do," Henderson said, feeling that Simon's generosity in picturing the experience in store for him merited some encouragement.

"Yes. When he was a boy his great pleasure was to tie little frogs, and even little cats, by strings and hold them in the blaze until they slowly died. It was the great enjoyment of his tender years.


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 Many times I have sat by and laughed to see the sweet pleasure of his little face as the foolish creatures squirmed. You should see a little frog tied by the leg and held in the blaze, Gabriel. It is amazing the life there is in such a contemptible thing."

Henderson was considering himself through all this talk by Simon. He did not doubt that the fellow was telling the truth about Roberto's vicious plans for revenge. He determined that Roberto never should lay lash to his back while he lived to lift a hand to fight. They might kill him in the struggle to drag him to Roberto's cross, but Roberto never should humiliate and degrade his living body. It might be there in the cell when they came to take him out to his chastisement, it might be in the open under the sky, but there would be a fight that they would remember and respect him for all their days. That he vowed.

"Yes, the devil has been to pay around this place today," Simon said, jumping off the subject of Roberto's fine humor as abruptly as he had begun it. "The governor has been here, demanding this wild Yankee girl, Helena Sprague, to be locked in jail at the pueblo and tried for treason against her country. Seven doctors! how Don Abrahan defied him to his face."

"If she is a Yankee she can't be a traitor to Mexico," Henderson said, ready now to talk to any length and draw from Simon everything he knew. It was the first word he had heard of the


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 accusation of treason against Helena. It startled him with a greater concern for her safety than for his own.

"Yankee in blood and heart only, Gabriel. Her father was a citizen, like that old lizard Toberman, and Toberman was a traitor. They say this Helena plotted with Toberman to deliver the country to the Yankees—as if there were Yankees enough in the world to take it out of our hands!"

"Have they arrested her? Is she here?"

"She is here, with that little fat hen Doña Carlota. There, if you could lift yourself up to the window, you could see the one that this red-headed traitor looks through upon the sun that they say will soon stop shining for her eyes."

"Don Abrahan's prisoner, not the State's? That seems a strange situation."

Henderson turned this thought aloud, hardly considering the presence of Simon. But Simon, sharp in more ways than one, had made observations of his own.

"Don Abrahan wishes her to sign a certain little paper," he said. "My Josefa listened yesterday outside the door and heard. I tell you this, for it is all right to tell a dead man anything, and you are the same as a dead man, Gabriel."

"Certainly, Simon. A little paper, you said?"

"Don Abrahan promised her if she would sign this trifling deed to her lands and all that she owns, he would give her another certain little paper that speaks the proof of her plotting with the Yankees,


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 and she would go free. Simple; yes. My little Josefa heard it all."

"Very simple," said Henderson. "And because the governor has no proof against her, Don Abrahan defies him."

"That is the great joke of the whole thing," said Simon, with keen relish in telling it, although to one who was the same as dead. "Last night somebody entered the patron's office and stole this evidence. The governor declares a patriot delivered it to him. I'd like to have been that patriot! I'll bet he got a hatful of gold."

"But Don Abrahan defied him, in spite of the paper?" Henderson was grateful to Don Abrahan for once, and genuine in his admiration of his courage, though self-interest had moved the patron to this defense.

"You could hear him roar as loud as a jackass. The heart of every man on the ranch stood still to hear Don Abrahan roar, and the pale governor threatened to send soldiers and burn down the mansion. And so the governor went back to the pueblo to get his soldiers, and Don Abrahan went after him to stop them. It is known that Don Abrahan holds his hand over General Verdugo like a little chick. No, Gabriel, the soldiers will not come."

"Who was the patriot that stole the paper? Who would know about it?" Henderson wondered.

There was something in Simon's face when he


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 spoke of that trick which seemed more than the hint of knowledge unrevealed. Henderson believed if he could get this out of Simon, grown friendly and loquacious in the hope of coming into his prisoner's watch and money, it might be a lever to lift him out of his own desperate condition. He seemed abstractedly to draw the three gold coins that he possessed out of his pocket, to shuffle them aimlessly in his fingers in the way of one whose thoughts overshadow his actions.

"It is a mystery as thick as a fog," Simon declared. His eyes shifted to follow the quick-shuffled gold pieces; he turned in his deep interest and stood holding the bars of the door.

"It was somebody in Don Abrahan's own house," said Henderson, speaking with more certainty than guess. "Here, Simon. What good is money to a dead man? You were right."

Henderson dropped a ten-dollar piece into Simon's hand. Simon's face was close to the bars, his nose almost between them.

"And what good is knowing things that must soon pass out of him like water out of a broken olla?" Simon asked.

"What harm, then? Who was it that robbed Don Abrahan last night, Simon?"

Henderson dropped the two remaining gold-pieces from one hand to the other, and back again, as if he cooled them to put them in his pocket.

"There was a talk last night under a window," said Simon, pressing his face to the bars. "I was


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 behind the pepper tree, where no man was thought to be. I heard."

Henderson reached out his hand, the two gold-pieces between his fingers like a man about to plant a seed. Simon's hand came through the bars, palm upward, as thirsty for what hung over it as autumn vegas for rain. Henderson seemed wrapped in an obscuring cloud of thought. He did not plant the seed of man's undoing in this yearning, fecund soil.

"I heard a man offer liberty for a fool girl's heart," Simon said. His hand came through a little farther; still the planting of gold was withheld. "And I heard a fool girl refuse to accept it unless your prison door was opened and you were permitted to go to your people. Then I heard a dagger strike on a bar of iron at a window, and there were curses in a man's throat. 'You love him too much!' he said. And that was all I heard. What will jealousy drive a man to do, Don Gabriel? You are wise in the books. Have I said enough?"

"You have said enough, Simon."

Henderson dropped the gold coins, but, due to his abstraction, as it seemed, they missed Simon's hand and fell softly among the straw that had been the prisoner's bed. Henderson made apology, stooping to recover the money, stirring the straw with vexed exclamations, scattering it impatiently about.

"The devil take them!" he said. "Strange how completely they have disappeared."


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 "Wait, I'll help you. If you stir it up too much they will never be found till the straw is burned."

Simon unlocked the door, caution and prudence alike as nothing to him in the scent of money that had so contrarily eluded his hand. He thrust head and shoulders into the cell, bending low to rake the straw with his long fingers. Henderson, stooping near, not a foot between their shoulders, snatched the heavy water pitcher and struck Simon senseless to the ground.


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IMON must wake disappointed to find the gold piece gone out of his pocket, Henderson believed; he doubted whether his humiliation over his downfall would be greater than that. As Simon lay with the light knocked out of him, his jaw pried wide, his own clasp-knife tied between his teeth like a bit, Henderson stood considering him a little while before leaving him to his bitter awakening.

He was a long man, stretched out so, and would be longer one day when he stretched with nothing for his feet to stand upon. Henderson was convinced that day was in reserve for him, and so spared the life that was in him to bring him to a more fitting end. But Simon's feet he had bound, and his hands, these with the rope that the sardonic braggart had drawn with unsparing cruelty about his own wrists only twenty-four hours since. So fate turns the fortunes of men around, Henderson thought, with a great deal of satisfaction in the reversal of Simon.

Henderson buckled Simon's notable pistol around himself, disappointed in his search for ammunition. Simon evidently had believed the six charges in the chambers sufficient for one scorned Yankee, and carried no more. Henderson was


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 thankful for so much. He locked the doors on his late warden, put the keys in his pocket and left him to come out of his stunned condition as nature might repair him.

There appeared to be plenty of life in Simon, although it was pretty well driven back into its secret places. The water jar was heavy, of six quarts or more capacity; the broken pieces of it were half an inch thick. But not much thicker than Simon's head, Henderson thought. He had struck the rascal on his most vulnerable spot, over what in a well-balanced man would have been his small brain, but in Simon his principal seat of intelligence. He was only an animal.

Henderson passed out through the guard chamber where Simon's straw pallet lay heaped behindthe door, proof that he had been cautious last night, whatever cupidity had done for him today. Beyond this room the warehouse was familiar. It was a part not much frequented, only wood and lumber being stored there, piled in tiers high against the ceiling. Here Henderson paused to listen for what movement was about the place, and to form his plans upon the necessity of the moment.

Ordinarily an armed man could have taken all before him at Don Abrahan's place, few there being permitted to own or carry any farther-reaching weapon than a knife. But since the turmoil of the morning there was no knowing what guards Don Abrahan had set around his house, especially


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 since there was a prisoner within it whom the magistrate was determined no other hand but his own should rob.

The quietude that had settled over the hacienda after the noise of the governor's arrival and departure continued unbroken. It was like a holy day when the peones were permitted to troop off to the pueblo and attend church, although Henderson knew that such was not the case. Outside the warehouse there was the frequent sound of passing feet, and low words spoken when two met and paused.

Henderson's watch had run down while his arms were tied, he had not seen the sun to gauge the height of day, but he reckoned that it must be well past noon. If Simon had told the truth about Roberto's intentions, they would be coming soon to take him from prison cell to whipping-post.

In the extreme end of the warehouse from Don Felipe's office was a room in which Don Abrahan stored wool and the hides of sheep. As these common commodities were of little value, and presented few attractions to thieves, the room never was locked. Henderson passed softly out of the first chamber, across the intervening passage and into this room, where great woolsacks lay buttressed against the walls.

There was a small window in this place, crossed by horizontal bars, reminiscent of a time when something more valuable than wool had been in its keeping. This opening gave an unobstructed


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 view of the mansion, so called, and a great part of the courtyard through which the business of the place came and went as through the plaza of a town.

Simon had spoken truly of the improvement Roberto had ordered made in the whipping-post. A cross-piece of new wood had been nailed to the thick cedar post, at about the height of a man's outstretched arms. Two women with baskets of washed clothing were going by; they paused beside the station of degradation, talking earnestly. One of them touched the new wood, her hand reluctant and slow, as if she feared it as a thing that already had the blood of a man stained in its rough grain.

The whipping-post never had been used during Henderson's time on the ranch, Don Abrahan having other more subtle, more cruel means of breaking the soul of an insubordinate man. But the terrors of the thing were fresh in the recollection of all the people; some of them had shown Henderson how the wretched person brought there for chastisement was forced to embrace the thick timber, from which the bark had been removed or worn long ago, the gray lint of the years softening it in melancholy harmony with its unhappy use. Two heavy iron rings were set into the wood where the subject's hands reached as he stood clasping the post with his arms. There his wrists were bound, the skin of his back drawn so tight that the bite of the rawhide parted it with every blow.


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 The courtyard into which Henderson now stood looking from the warehouse window lay directly behind Don Abrahan's mansion. The windows opening on the patio gave a view into this courtyard, as the windows of a street running out from a square. Henderson wondered which of the barred windows Helena Sprague looked through upon the cross that stretched its arms to receive him; and whether she had been told of Roberto's vengeful planning to inflict this cowardly punishment before her eyes.

There were three of these barred oriel windows in the face of each wing of the house, and one at each end. As Henderson watched for a movement within, the glimpse of a face that might tell him which window was Helena's, a thing that he desired with a grave and urgent reason for knowing, Roberto came riding into the courtyard.

Roberto was riding a beautiful black gelding that Henderson recognized at once as Helena Sprague's property. She had shown him this animal in her stable, John Toberman comparing it on that occasion to a Yankee clipper for its fine proportions and speed. Roberto also had appreciated the animal's fine points, and had been somewhat more successful in coming into possession of it than he had been with its owner.

The young man presented a handsome figure, riding as securely and lightly as any vaquero, although the beast was restive and rebellious under his strange hand. Henderson thought it appeared


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 resentful, spiteful, in its reluctance to obey rein and spur. It reared vainly in what appeared to be a determined effort to unseat the rider, and shied at the whipping-post as if some strange thing had sprung suddenly from the ground.

Roberto curbed the horse with unsparing hand, parading it back and forth across the courtyard with eye tugned always to the patio, his purpose as plain as if a herald had proclaimed it.

Roberto was dressed in the subdued lavishness which was a peculiar art with him, an art distinguishing him generally in gatherings since his return home, where the inclination of youth was for barbaric color without harmony or restraint. He wore a green jacket ornamented with silver braid, a sash of silver gray, its tasseled ends streaming a foot behind him when he rode. Henderson noted that he wore thrust into this belt the two Yankee pistols of the latest Massachusetts make which he had brought home from the capital.

When Roberto rode toward Don Felipe's end of the warehouse, he passed out of Henderson's sight; when he returned, he crossed the courtyard sometimes within a rod of where the half-free prisoner stood. While this parade was going on the people of the ranch, who appeared to have been given liberty to witness Don Roberto's valor that afternoon, began to gather along the face of the warehouse wall.

Some of these men and women had come to know Henderson well during the latter weeks of his


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 servitude, and to put down their first suspicions and racial antipathy. There were sympathetic hearts among them, homely and ignorant as they were, timid and shuddering in their beliefs of witchcraft and curse and evil eye. Henderson doubted if any of them would interpose to stop him in his dash for liberty, though the patron himself should appear and command them. In this confidence he had little concern for their numbers, as they came in silence that was anything but festival to range along the wall and wait the young master's pleasure in the entertainment he had promised.

Now Don Felipe appeared, and stood in the courtyard near the whipping-post as if waiting Roberto's orders. He had come, Henderson well knew, to summon Simon with the prisoner.

Roberto appeared to be in no hurry to come to this, parading back and forth in such high and insolent state upon his borrowed, or confiscated, horse. He was waiting for the appearance of a face at one of the barred windows. No matter who attended and stood waiting, Roberto had set this entertainment for Helena alone.

The horse had either a short memory or a stubborn will; he would not accustom himself to the whipping-post, the outreaching cross of which seemed so menacing and prominent, the new wood against the old. Each time he came opposite the cross he pitched and shied in fright, shaking his defiant head until the trappings of the bridle clashed.


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 Roberto appeared to lose patience with the animal at last, determined that he was to break it to his will. He faced the horse toward the post, and, gathering his reins with strong hand, rasped his long-spiked spurs across its sides with sudden and vicious sweep.

Henderson heard the horse grunt in terrified pain as it crouched a moment under the barbarous inflection of this torture strange to it. When it sprang to escape, Roberto checked it harshly, bringing it up short, throwing it to its haunches in a cloud of dust. The animal seemed to throw off its terror with this hard usage, and to gather itself in an angry effort to rid its back of the tormentor. It reared, flung its head in wild defiance, arched its back, stopped with stiffened legs braced hard.

Roberto had given it only a gentle foretaste of the agony that lay in the two-inch rowels of his silver-gilt spurs. Now he clamped them to the beast's belly and pressed with slow and growing force, sinking the spikes through the glossy skin. Again the terrified, mad plunge to escape; again the hard, restraining hand. Henderson sweated in the resentment of this cruelty practiced on a creature that could neither strike in defense nor flee out of its tormentor's reach.

Still the horse defied its rider to urge it up to the terrifying cross. The torture of rasping spur, of grinding bit, could not overcome its magnificent spirit of defiance. Roberto drove it forward again and again, with all the mastery of his practiced


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 hand. A certain distance from the cross it stopped, abruptly as if it met a palpable barrier there which it could not pass, legs set stiffly against all urging to compel it on. No amount of punishment that Roberto had in his heels could drive it a yard nearer.

Roberto had gained his desire in one thing, at least, if not over the horse. Helena Sprague had appeared at a window in the east wing of the mansion, where she stood grasping the bars, the agony of her white face plain to Henderson across the fifty yards or more that separated them.

Henderson had not seen her come to the window. Between caution to guard himself from discovery, and his furious resentment of Roberto's cruelty to the horse, he had not watched the house closely. Now he saw someone behind Helena, whom he concluded to be Doña Carlota, attempting to draw her away from the window. Helena turned on this person with the sudden bursting of anger, and drove her back into the room.

Now that he had won the spectator for whom he had been playing this prelude to his principal entertainment, Roberto's spirits plainly rose high. The anger that had distorted his features but a moment before cleared away; a smile broadened on his heavy lips, a flush darkened his face. Satisfaction was lined there, the triumph of vengeance realized. His teeth gleamed in his spreading smile, proof that his pleasure in Helena's evident suffering was both keen and sincere. It was such


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 a satisfaction to show these new teeth of a man.

With Helena's appearance Roberto elaborated his tactics to compel the stubborn horse and break it to his will. He abandoned his attempt to force it directly to approach the whipping-post and smell away its fear of that object. Now he galloped to the opposite end of the courtyard, out of Henderson's sight, to come at headlong speed in a moment, thinking to win in this subterfuge what he had failed to gain before.

But with all this headway to impel him forward, the horse refused to be ridden to the post, where the fresh wood of the cross-arm shone yellow in the sun. It turned sharply, sliding, trampling, its maneuver carrying it over against the warehouse, making a scatterment among the people gathered along the wall.

The horse stopped within a few feet of the window at which Henderson crouched. Blood and sweat dripped from the frantic creature's sides, its breath was hoarse in its nostrils. Roberto gave the harried thing its way for a moment, permitting it to stand where it had stopped. He raised himself until he stood in his stirrups on his toes, his superb body in tense grace of stretched muscle and tendon, swept his hand in slow, expressive salute to Helena, something of mockery in the gesture, in his very pose. Thus far, he seemed to say, this has been a colorless affair. Now the show is about to begin.

Roberto rode slowly to the center of the court-


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 yard, where he began again his heart-sickening atrocities upon the horse. He rodea circle around the whipping post, increasing the speed until the animal strained to its last pound of strength, Roberto leaning on the narrowing ring, an admirable figure, even in his despicable design.

Cunningly he drew the circle closer; nearer and nearer he approached the post. There was a murmuring near Henderson's window; caution made him draw back into the dark room. When he looked again presently, Roberto was throwing himself out of the saddle to save being crushed as the horse reared to fling itself backward with hoofs beating the air. Roberto had gained his poor desire. He had ridden the horse up to the post.

But it was a triumph marred, a victory only half won. The humiliation of being unseated before the owner of this unruly beast, who must be applauding its successful maneuver as Roberto scrambled to his feet out of the dust, was an abasement that no caballero could suffer to pass. Roberto had the reins in his hand while the horse was heaving itself up from the dusty turmoil of its hazardous fall.

Roberto drew the reins around the upright post, shortening them with adroit hand, dragging the unwilling beast up until its nose was within a foot of the thing it had fought so bitterly to avoid. A moment Roberto stood confronting the animal, as if to charge it with a greater terror of him by meeting it eye to eye. Then he seized its forelock,


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 snatching out the dagger that he always wore in a leather sheath at his belt.

Helena Sprague, knowing his scoundrelly intention before it even dawned to Henderson, screamed as if the dagger threatened her own throat.

"No, no! you thief!" she cried.

She stood grasping a bar of the window with both hands, trying hopelessly to tear it out of its heavy bracket and go to the help of her horse, menaced by a danger that Henderson did not yet understand. Roberto lifted his dagger, sweeping it as if to salute her, to dedicate to her the sacrifice, the sun flashing on its bright blade.

"What a pity to blind such a horse!" a man near Henderson's window said.

There was a passage between the place where lumber was stored and this chamber of woolsacks, into which a wagon could be driven. The people who had gathered to see Don Roberto's entertainment stood across this passage as Henderson dashed from his concealment, Simon's big pistol in his hand. They parted like smoke before him; the murmur of their astonishment sounded in his ears as he bounded into the open and ran with the spring of his sea strength in his limbs, across the court.

Roberto turned at the sound of Henderson's feet, his dagger held high, as he had poised it to sink it in the eye of the unconquered horse.

Roberto had reason to fear the wrath of this


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 man, burst from his prison as if he had grown strong in the purpose he had vowed to Don Abrahan only yesterday. Not only the blood of John Toberman, but the wrong of his own oppression, stood in this man's memory to be avenged. It seemed a miracle that had delivered him and sent him there as Roberto stood in the posture of a man who lifts his hands in supplication for his life, one grasping the forelock of the horse, the other lifting the dagger to blind its defiant eyes.

"Keep your hands where they are!" Henderson commanded him.

Roberto, seeming to obey, dropped the dagger, his calculative eye measuring his chance of drawing a pistol. Henderson was advancing, closing on him rapidly. Roberto was not a coward, neither a fool. He realized that Henderson's situation would not admit temporizing or empty bluster. When a man in that desperate pass stepped out with a pistol in his hand, he came in the determination to kill if necessary. Roberto's fingers twitched as he set them to reach for a weapon, but reason held them as they were.

"Permit me," said Henderson, his pistol against Roberto's breast as he took from his sash the modern Yankee pistol nearest to hand. He took the mate of it also, keeping it in his hand, kicked the dagger far out of Roberto's reach, while Don Felipe and all of them stood by with hearts fairly bursting to see the valor of this Yankee sailor with the laughter and soul of youth and friendship in


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 his glad blue eyes. In the window of the patio there was the sound of applauding hands.

There were ropes at the foot of the whipping-post, ready for binding his own limbs, Henderson knew. And there lay coiled the rawhide whip with lash soaked in water to give it weight, that Roberto had intended to swing upon his victim's naked back.

"Pick up that rope," Henderson directed. Roberto, watching him with fear staring in his eyes as he stooped and blindly laid hold of the rope, appeared to believe that his moment to die had come.

Henderson put the Yankee pistol in his belt, leaving his left hand free, cast off the bridle reins from the post. The horse started back a step in retreat, only to stop according to its training when the reins fell to the ground, seeing that no more violence was aimed at its head. Henderson faced Roberto to the whipping-post, fashioned a noose in his deft sailor quickness, his pistol pressing Roberto's back, holding him close against the wood.

A turn, and the noose was around Roberto's neck; a pull, and he was bound to the post, shamed and humiliated in the eyes of his meanest servants, none of whom loved him well enough to come forward and lift a hand in his defense.

With quick turns of the rope around the cross-piece, Henderson tied Roberto's outstretched arms. While he was doing this Don Felipe came


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 forward, trepidation in his manner, fear in his face.

"But, Don Gabriel, you are not going to whip him?" he asked, standing off a little way.

"No, Don Felipe. It is not the way of a gentleman of my country to strike a helpless man. I degrade him in your eyes, and leave him to consider what might have happened to him if I had been a Mexican."

Henderson turned to the people, who had come out a little way from the wall when they saw that the Yankee sailor did not shoot Don Felipe down at the first movement of his foot.

"The man that releases him will be the first man to die," he said.


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OBERTO had yielded like a lamb in a leash, spreading his arms to the cross as if to embrace his bride. The fear of death was over him, the folly of resistance plain to his eyes. It was better to yield to a few minutes of humiliation than to lie stiff in the grave forever. Humiliation could be requited by brave deeds of reprisal and revenge, but not so death. The Yankee might lay defiling hands on the body of a Mexican gentleman for the little moment of his power, but he was only one Yankee in a country of Mexican gentlemen. Roberto swore by the sacred blood that he would feed this Yankee's heart to the fire.

Henderson stood a few moments as if waiting for somebody to step forward and test the sincerity of his edict, the bridle rein of Roberto's late mount in his hand. There was more fear of the Yankee sailor with three pistols in his belt than love of the patron's son among the men who served, free and bond, on Don Abrahan's estate. None came forward to cut the young master's shameful ropes and set him free.

They had big eyes for the man from the ship, as they spoke of him, who had sprung up into the estate of hero from his obscurity well in accord


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 with their own romantic ideals. Heroic fire in the humble burst out of their own sad ranks of oppression in just that manner now and then, when a man would arm and mount, and ride and rob, a scourge to the rich, a benefactor to the poor. There was not one among them but wished Don Gabriel well of his adventure.

Henderson was a strange figure in their eyes, accustomed as they were to seeing him come and go among them in quite different garments. He was dressed in the manner of an American plainsman, in the clothing John Toberman had supplied him from his personal wardrobe. He wore a heavy gray wool shirt without coat, dark corduroy trousers folded into tall, broad-topped boots. His hat was an old one, brown and weather-beaten as an old eagle, the broad brim of it pliant and hard to keep back from falling like a blinder over the eyes. To prevent this, Henderson had pinned one side of it up with a thorn.

There was a suggestion of romance, of headlong intrepidity, in the turned-up hat brim that the peones appreciated. They talked of Don Gabriel's competent, heroic appearance, gathering in little groups, passing back and forth in suppressed excitement. Henderson turned to the mansion, where Helena Sprague waited at her barred window, the horse following in quiet confidence.

"Felipe! Felipe!" Roberto called, imperiously, impatiently. He knew that the mayordomo stood near, although he could not turn his head to see.


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 "Don Roberto, I am here."

"Cut these cursed ropes, send for guns!" Roberto commanded.

"You heard Don Gabriel's command"

"Don Yankee, Don Sailor! Here—quick! Bring a gun, I will show who is don!"

"It would be instant death to touch the rope, Don Roberto."

"It will be instant death when my hands are free if you refuse again, coward! Vincente! Carlos! Are you all dogs? is there no man here?"

Nobody answered. Henderson had reached the patio, where he stood beneath Helena's window, facing them with three pistols in his belt.

"Fernando! Jaime! Benito! Juan!" Roberto called, command in the inflection of each name. Silence.

"Man fears death, Don Roberto, because it is the end," Don Felipe said, standing back a little farther from the cross.

"Infidel! You's hall stand here before the sun goes down on this day! Is one Yankee to rule the world?"

It was well for his own peace, such as the future might bring it, that Roberto could not see the cloud that darkened over Felipe's face when the threat of this punishment was uttered. The little mayordomo drew himself up, head held high, a flush of insult in his pale face. He stood a moment, hands clenched as if he strangled hot words in them; turned and went toward his office, walking so fast


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 that a murmur went through the crowd like a little wind through a field of maize as he passed.

It was that they were to see a tragedy, they said. Don Felipe was going for his knife.

"You are a brave and gallant gentleman, Don Gabriel," said Helena Sprague, her hand reaching toward him vainly, her face pressed to the bars.

Gabriel lifted his hand to his hat, eyes fixed on the crowd.

"Come away!" said Doña Carlota, scandalized, and shaken with fright. "It is wrong for you to talk to a brigand."

"I thank God you have burst your prison door, Don Gabriel," Helena said, pushing Doña Carlota back with impatient hand.

"Here is your horse, Miss Sprague. He has been abused, but not much hurt."

"He is yours, I give him to you."

"I have brought him for you to ride away, Helena. Felipe shall get me a crowbar, I'll tear down these bars or break in the door."

"You are generous and brave, but I have no place to flee to, Don—no place to hide from them, Gabriel."

"This is sinful, this will disgrace you forever!" Doña Carlota panted, tugging to draw her from the window.

"I have been told they have laid a charge of treason against you, Helena, and that Roberto, in the treachery of his mean soul"

"His jealous heart, Gabriel."


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 "Stole the evidence, a certain paper"

"That is why the governor came! The governor knows!"

"The evidence was delivered to the governor, I have been told. He has gone after soldiers to take you from Don Abrahan's house by force. You must leave here at once, go to the north—somewhere—out of their reach. Here is your horse—here, catch the rein—I will break in the door."

She caught the rein as he tossed it, her arm thrust between the bars.

"And you—and you, Gabriel?"

"I'll take a horse from the stable and go with you."

"No," she denied him softly, shaking her head. "We couldn't get away, I would only encumber you. Alone you can beat them, for you are resourceful and bold. I'd only hold you back, they'd murder you like they did John Toberman."

"They will murder you here, Helena."

"No, they'll only rob me, Gabriel. I can put that off—go away, Aunt Carlota! Leave me—go to your room and close the door!"

"The disgrace of this! a bandit!" Doña Carlota said.

Helena turned on her furiously, disappearing from the window, the bridle rein dropped to the ground. Henderson heard her, speaking in Spanish now, driving her tormentor from the room.

"I can delay the seizure of my property,"


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 Helena said, coming to the window again, her face flushed by the anger that had blasted Doña Carlota's courage like a wrinkled pea. "I can put them off a week, a month, by seeming about to yield to this one, a promise to that one. I can make them fight among themselves, as they are already started, over my estate. They will not dare to bring me to trial on this foolish charge of treason."

"I am afraid there are few things they will not dare against the helpless," said Gabriel, sorrowfully remembering John Toberman's last look.

"Don Abrahan will protect me if the governor presses the matter," she declared. "He is my distant relative, my condemnation would be his disgrace. He never will permit it, don't you see, Gabriel?"

"Have you any further news from Monterey?"

"No. I wasn't allowed to read the message they took from the man Roberto killed."

"I wish we knew whether the United States cruisers Toberman was expecting have arrived."

"It is plain you must go to Monterey, Gabriel, and find out. I will be safe, setting the wolves fighting over my property. Then, if the cruisers are there, or when they come, you will sail in one of them to San Pedro and march here with the marines and set me free."

"That's a long speculation, too great a gamble, Helena. You must go with me."

"I would be a stone around your neck, Gabriel. It is a long way, a woman's endurance is not equal


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 to a man's. I would drag, my courage might fail. They would overtake us and bring us back, and you would suffer for us both. For that reason, and that reason only, I will not go."

"But here"

"I shall be safe, as I have told you, Gabriel. Get on your horse, let him know his new master's hand. So—how well he behaves! he knows his friend. There—come close to the window, Gabriel. In Monterey see these men, whose names are here. If the ships haven't come these men will know how to help you."

"And who will help you, Helena? No, it would be cowardly for me to go."

"You are outlawed here, they'll hunt you down. You must ride fast to Monterey."

"A little prying with a crowbar and these things would fall—see, they shake, they are loose in the sill. Helena, come with me."

"You know it is not because I do not trust you, Gabriel. I couldn't go unprepared, as a man can go. Before we could be ready, Don Abrahan might return, or Roberto"

"I'll stay here, then. I'll hide in the hills, I'll come down on them and take my toll for John Toberman's life. If they harm you, every man that conspires against you shall die!"

"There would be many friends on your side, but they would be the weak and the poor, Gabriel. It would be better for you to go."

But there was a plea in her eyes, a reluctant


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 hope in her very words, that he would stay. She pressed her face between the bars, reaching out her hand.

"No, I'll not go to Monterey," he said decisively.

"Gabriel, Don Felipe went into his office a little while ago."

"I was watching him."

"He will be coming to set Roberto free in a minute. Go, Gabriel!—but a moment for my benediction."

She reached her hand to him, fluttering it like a frantic bird. Gabriel reined nearer, caught it, pressed it to his breast.

There was the sound of bare feet running. Liseta, who herded goats on the hills, stood panting at the corner of the patio.

"The soldiers, Don Gabriel!" she said, pointing toward the pueblo.

Helena started, looked across the vega where the barley fields were yellow.

"Gabriel! they are coming! You will be lost!"

"I will go to the hills," he whispered, leaning near.

"Nearer, Gabriel—for my benediction!"

Her face was pressed hard between the bars, her convulsive hand was now within his own. A little way to her lips, and that way so swiftly passed.

"Ah! what angel!" said Liseta.

Gabriel rode into the olive lane, thinking of a


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 sanctuary in the gray hills, pausing a moment where the yellow road made its turn to the eastward to sweep through the pass. There he looked back to estimate the number of soldiers, noting that there were eight, led by an officer who rode a little way in advance. Don Abrahan was not with them. Henderson went on his way.

At that moment Don Felipe rode out from Don Abrahan's gate and came galloping after Henderson. When he reached the head of the olive lane he lifted his right hand in witness of his pacific intention. Gabriel stopped, waiting for him to come.

"Don Gabriel, I have come to ride with you wherever your road may go, if you will permit me," Felipe said.

Henderson made a quick survey of the mayordomo, suspicious of this amazing declaration. Felipe was armed with two pistols and a rifle; he carried a knife in his belt, provisions and cooking utensils at the cantle of his saddle. His preparations for a campaign in the wilds appeared to be complete, too complete, Gabriel thought, for such hasty decision.

"Don Felipe, I have been betrayed lately by one who came to me with the face and the words of a friend," he said.

"I have suffered insults and degradations here that my soul revolts to recall," Felipe declared, flinging out his hand. "When I refused to cut the rope, that unripe tyrant threatened me with


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 the post and the lash. Threats are not idle on the tongue of that young oppressor. If I cannot go with you, then I must go alone."

Don Felipe's face was as earnest as the face of man could be. He spoke in the grave and resolute tone of one whose burden had grown too great, whose endurance was at an end. He rode on, saluting with outflung hand.

"Don Felipe, we will go together," Gabriel said, riding hard to overtake him. "But the risk is greater with me than it would be without me. The soldiers are coming"

"I saw them," said Felipe calmly.

"They will soon be on my trail."

"I know a way, Don Gabriel, that no soldier can follow," Felipe said in quiet confidence. "If I betray you, save a ball for me between the eyes."

"There will not be a doubt of it, Don Felipe," Henderson assured him, as he galloped at his side.


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ON FELIPE'S way that no soldier could follow did not lead into the hills. Hender son was doubtful of the honesty of his intention, alert for betrayal, when Felipe turned from the royal highway, as this road was still called, into the great plain where Don Abrahan's vaqueros grazed his herds.

"Men commonly go into the hills, the world over, Don Gabriel, when they desire to hide from vengeance, oppression and the law," Felipe said. "By varying this general custom we secure our safety in the first step. Well, I have friends where we are going. That is something to a man."

"Yes, that is much, Felipe. Every friend is an extra pair of eyes and ears."

"And feet to run, and hands to strike, Don Gabriel, when they are friends such as mine. True, they are all of the common, the poor; some of them are old, with eyes pinched to little cracks. But you shall see."

They rode boldly, making no attempt to hide either their tracks or the fact of their passing. Sometimes they sighted cowboys in the distance, once they passed near one, whom they saluted with uplifted hand, after the manner of the open places


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 and the long road the world over, also, as Felipe in his philosophy observed. It must have been half an hour that they held their way southward, skirting Don Abrahan's fields at times, again hidden in groves of oaks. Then they turned westward, toward the sea.

"This is the estate that liberty and equality cost me," Felipe said, when they had traveled in that direction several miles. "You have seen the equality among men in this country, Don Gabriel; you have tasted its liberty. I am to blame, along with other patriots who overthrew the ancient regime. But the oppression of the mission priests was better than this liberty. That I will say to any man."

"So, this was your estate, Felipe?"

Henderson paused. It was open country, bearing no trace of improvement, its grassy glades set here and there with clumps of dark-green oaks.

"Beginning at the arroyo, the dry creek, behind us, extending westward to the sea. From the hills on the north, beyond the first hills you see on the south, five leagues square. That was my grandfather's grant from the king. Not much, but my grandfather was a moderate man. What does it matter? There is still room in the world for a man to breathe."

"It's a beautiful stretch of country, the finest I've seen in California. Who owns it now, Felipe?"

"It was divided among several of liberty's aris-


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 tocrats, none of whom live in California. They are all in the capital, their land lies here free of taxes, rented by small drovers and poor farmers. Where we are going there is a small settlement of people to whom my father gave land when he saw the republic would take it away from him. The new government respected the titles of these small beneficiaries, faithful servants of my father's house. They will conceal us, there will be willing feet to carry us the news."

"There's no need for you to hide, they can't molest you for leaving your position of mayordomo on Don Abrahan's estate."

"I brought away a little more of Don Abrahan's gold than he may compute to be my due," Felipe confessed, very openly, with entire ease of conscience. "But no amount of gold, Don Gabriel, would repay me for the humiliation of spirit I have suffered there since young Roberto came back home."

"And you paid yourself from Don Abrahan's treasury?" Gabriel said, seeing the humor of that convenient plan. "While you were about it, I wish you'd made a settlement for me."

"What is mine is my friend's," Felipe said, with such simple sincerity that Gabriel's last cloud of suspicion dissolved and blew away.

"Do you know anything about Don Abrahan's dispute with the governor over the custody of Helena Sprague? Simon told me, as a confidence given a dead man, as he considered me, that the


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 governor went to the pueblo to send troops to take her away, and that Don Abrahan went after him to stop them."

"I think that was the state of the affair, Don Gabriel."

Gabriel turned to Felipe, brows drawn in a frown of annoyance. Felipe looked at him with startled eyes, for to him, even hero of the late revolution that he was, this sailor who had grown so great on the bitter nourishment of his vengeance that he had filled and burst Don Abrahan's prison in a day, was no less romantic, magnificent, invincible, than he had appeared to poor Liseta when she stood panting out her warning in the patio.

"Felipe, let's drop all this don formality when we speak to each other," Gabriel said. "Call me Gabriel, or Gabe, or anything you like, but leave off the don."

"Very well, Gabriel," Felipe agreed, but with reluctance that seemed a protest against giving up a dignity for his new friend that it was men's duty to respect.

"You noticed that the old man wasn't with the soldiers?"

"No, I only looked to see how near they were as I rode out of the gate. So, Don Abrahan was not there?"

"He must have failed to influence that Verdugo scoundrel. Maybe the governor offered him a bigger share."

"The highest bidder would get him, for he is a


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 scoundrel with no more principle than a squirrel," Felipe said. "But let them take all of her land and cattle, they can't make her poor," he added, so completely satisfied with the declaration that he smiled.

"That would be impossible," Gabriel agreed. "Nature has endowed her with treasures of mind and heart that villains such as Verdugo can't steal."

"And her gold has been sent to Boston year by year. John Toberman attended to that, distrustful always of these descendants of the hidalgos. He had many friends on the Boston ships, it was an easy matter for him to send the gold to be put in the bank in Boston. Let them take all she has here, and she will still come to your arms a rich bride, Gabriel."

"You can plan faster than I, Felipe," Henderson said, shaking his head.

"I have seen it since the night you snatched her shoe from Roberto under the tree. I have seen it in her eyes."

"You're a better hand at reading the ladies' eyes than I am, then, Felipe," Henderson laughed. But his heart leaped when he remembered her benediction, and he knew that Felipe had learned his book very well.

"I have had my romance, even I," Felipe sighed; although he did not appear a likely subject for romance in relation to the ladies, especially, as he rode by Henderson's side. His black beard, its stubbles as thick as if plumbago smeared his jaws,


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 gave him an aspect of fierceness that would not appear to admit a gentle thought.

Henderson pulled his horse up, drawing rein as if he intended to turn back.

"Felipe, do you suppose the governor sent those men to take her away from Don Abrahan's house?"

"Who knows?" Felipe replied, shifting the responsibility of a direct reply in the manner of his blood.

"I must find out. Felipe, I'm going back."

"That would be a perilous thing to do, Gabriel."

"Her peril is greater than mine. She was relying on Don Abrahan to protect her, she convinced me he would be able to do it, even against the governor. But Don Abrahan has lost his power. Felipe, they'll murder her."

"I doubt if they would go that far. They can confiscate her property without that."

"They hate her for her Yankee blood, because she speaks English. And I suppose she is guilty of treason, since the two countries are at war. Felipe, I was a fool not to bring her with me."

"That would have been better, if there had been time. But the soldiers would have come before you could have broken down the door."

"I'm going back!"

"It would be too rash," Felipe protested, laying his hand on Gabriel's rein to check his hazardous intention. There is a better plan."


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 "They'll murder her while we stand talking!"

"I know them, their ways are open to me. Wait till evening, when our horses are fresh for a hard run, then we'll go back. There is old Cecilia, Liseta's mother. She will know everything."

Henderson would not yield at once. It required a good deal of Felipe's sensible reasoning to convince him that he would only throw his life away by returning to Don Abrahan's before night. Don Abrahan would have summoned his friends, would have gathered then in the pueblo, to stand with him against the governor.

It would be a little revolution, Felipe said, such as were common to that country when the powerful landowners felt imported authority running counter to their interests and desires. More than one governor had been packed out of California in past years. It was very likely, Felipe said, that Don Abrahan would win, even if the military had succeeded in removing Helena from his house.

At length this argument prevailed. Henderson agreed to wait till sunset, and then proceed under Felipe's guidance to Don Abrahan's ranch.

A few minutes' ride from the place where they halted for this colloquy brought them to a well-traveled road, which they pursued several miles toward the sea. It was then something past midafternoon; the wind that always sets in from the sea in summer at that period of the day, was beginning then to dispel the heat of the hazy, drowzy


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 valley. It came fresh and inspiring, with the scent of breaching seas, appealing to the sailor as he rode like a call from home.

"Where you see that sycamore," said Felipe, pointing, "there we stop."

The sycamore was a tree of great girth, its bole knotted, its branches distorted in grotesque twistings, angular elbows, as if it had grown in slow torture through its two hundred years and more. It was the largest tree of any species whatever that Henderson had seen in California, its branches covering not less than a hundred feet.

Close by in a little ravine a strong spring issued from the bank; a little way from this precious vein of water a small adobe house seemed to shrink and hide among fig and almond trees. An adobe wall could be seen through the intervening growth of cacti and chaparral, behind which maize was growing tall.

An old man was sitting in the sun near the spring, apparently indifferent to the passing of the two riders, no more concerned when they left the road at the sycamore as if to seek the refreshment of his spring. He was the framework only of what had been a magnificent man, bony now and dry, his tattered shirt of some once gay material loose on his gaunt shoulders, his thin, short beard as white as the ash of seasoned oak.

He sat with hands clasped around his updrawn knees, a man without a thought, it seemed, one who had lived his apportioned years and had crept


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 to the roadside to save death the trouble of reaching within doors for him when it passed. A dark and wrinkled man, his sombrero, shaggy and mangy as the coat of an old burro, pulled down to shade his eyes.

The old man rose with surprising agility as the two riders came near. It must not be that he had an appointment with death for that day, or many days to come, Henderson thought, regarding him with surprise. He seemed as supple as a man carrying half his years; his step was quick when he advanced, evidence of pleasure was in his kindly, wrinkled face.

"Don Felipe! I thought my eyes were deceiving me, it has been so long since they had the good luck to see your face."

"Pablo, my friend."

Felipe leaned with outstretched hand to meet the old man's. It was plain by the fervor of that handclasp that equality between men was not altogether a poetic fancy with this Don Felipe, whom liberty had stripped of his lands.

"How have you passed, Felipe?" the old man asked.

"Oh, but so-so, Pablo. And you?"

"Like a tortoise. Well, I have had my day."

"I pray God to give you many more, old friend. I have the honor to present my comrade and friend, Gabriel Henderson. Gabriel, this is. Pablo Gonzales, my second father."

The old man looked up with quick interest, the


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 sleepy lids of his eyes lifting, showing them keen and bright.

"You are the man from the ship who lived with Don Abrahan; I have heard of you," he said. He offered his hand, in the ease of perfect equality, with all the dignity of his years. "And you are the one who gave the young bear a green eye, and left him whining for the lady of his desire. It is a pleasure to grasp your hand, Don Gabriel."

Gabriel's embarrassment was little less than his surprise at hearing his exploits so widely known and so romantically embellished, but he gave old Pablo a warm return of his greeting, seeing that he was sincere.

"It is said the Americans are coming soon to take this country and add it to their own," Pablo said. "But I do not know. Have you heard of this, Don Gabriel?"

"They will come, Mr. Gonzales. How soon, I do not know."

"If they will leave me my house, and not break down the wall around my garden. I shall need them only a little while longer now, if they will leave them to me, Don Gabriel."

"No honest man will be poorer for their coming, your house and your garden will be secure, Mr. Gonzales. It is only the rascals and oppressors of the poor who will feel the difference."

"Some say they will set the peones free from the hands of such men as Don Abrahan, the magistrate. If so, I pray God to hasten the day."


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 "It will be done, Mr. Gonzales."

"I have been a free man all my life," the old man proudly declared, stretching his long arms wide, like an old eagle exulting in the freedom that still was his. "No man lives until he is free. Do you go to meet the Americans, Felipe, you and your friend?"

Felipe explained in as few words as could cover the situation, what had set the two of them upon the road that day.

"We have come seeking refuge, and the counsel of your wisdom in the dangerous hours that are before us," Felipe said, throwing the whole matter before his ancient friend for his judgment.

"This is a place where no enemy of my friends can find his way," said the old man, with such quiet, simple declaration of loyalty that made Henderson's heart quicken to hear.

"I told my friend I would lead him to such a place," Felipe said.

"Do they follow you?"

"Not yet, Pablo. We must go back tonight and break the hornets' nest."

Felipe told the old man of Helena's situation, arranging for her to hide there under his protection, also, if it should become necessary.

"Gabriel is going back tonight to take her away from them, let it be Don Abrahan, the soldiers or the devil who is shutting her up behind barred windows, and I am going with him, to load his pistols, if nothing more."


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 "You will show your friend the retreat," Pablo directed. "If there is nobody after you yet, there is nothing to fear, but the rabbit must know where to find its hole when the coyote comes."

Felipe led the way through a grove of live-oak and sycamore trees that bordered on Pablo's garden, into a cleared space a little distance behind the old man's house, where the crumbling walls of what must have been at one time an extensive homestead encumbered the ground. These ruins appeared to be of a day long past, their walls tumbled down, the frames gone from gaping windows and doors. Blackened ends of beams still held here and there in the walls, stood as evidence of the tragedy that had leveled this once consequential seat. Henderson was astonished when Felipe extended welcome with sweeping movement of his outstretched hand, saying:

"Gabriel, behold my ancestral walls."

"This was your home, Felipe?"

"Home, Gabriel. Here I was born, here my father and mother came from Spain, bride and groom, to join my grandfather, who had prepared this house to receive them. The soldiers of the revolution burned it after my father fled to Spain."

"It looks like an older ruin," said Gabriel, looking around with sad interest in the fallen strength of this once grand place. "But I see now it couldn't have been long ago, the trees that have come up between the walls are still small."


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 "Adobe walls without a roof over them soon look ancient, Gabriel. There is Pablo's fence, it seems a century old. He built it not twenty years ago."

"But what is there here, Felipe, to prevent soldiers or anybody else, following and finding us?" Gabriel inquired, puzzled to find himself in a place of such doubtful security.

"First, there is Pablo," Felipe replied. "He does not wake and become alert for everybody that approaches him. The soldiers, Don Abrahan, would find him only a sleepy, dull, deaf and dim-eyed old man. But you will understand what he means, what I mean, when you know him better. He could send the keenest soldier or officer of the law off on a chase that would take him a long time to find out was empty, as he has done many a time. The Franciscans outlawed by the revolution used to hide here, Pablo sitting beside the road as you saw him when we arrived."

"That is all very good, Felipe, but it seems to me not quite enough for security."

"There is more," Felipe said, discovering this with triumph, as if he had held it covered to remove his friend's last doubt. "Over there, behind that adobe wall, is a retreat built by my grandfather, designed as a refuge in time of the uprising of the abused Indian peones which he always expected would come in his day, but which never came. It once had an entrance from the mansion,


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 which is closed now by the fallen walls. The exit remains, with shelter for us, as you shall see."

The ancient Guiterrez, grandfather of Felipe, had used this underground vault to store his wine casks, pending the day when he might need it to escape with his family from the just and long-sleeping vengeance of the oppressed Indians, who labored in virtual slavery on the vast mission estates, and the lands of the hidalgos who lived in harmony with them in the tyranny they jointly exercised over the land. It was an elaborate work for his day, no doubt, but in Gabriel Henderson's eyes it appeared crude and useless as either a place of concealment or defense against an intelligent and determined foe. But, like Don Abrahan's house, its chief commendable feature was the many means of escaping from it. There had been four of these long passages originally, two of which remained.

The existence of this old underground refuge was not known to many now, Felipe said. There were tales of it, romantic and tragic, but only three or four old men, Pablo included, could lead the way to it. And these were loyal men, who would die before they would betray him.

Within the underground recess there was room for several horses as well as people. At the word of alarm, one could mount and go before those who looked for him even gained suspicion from the cunning old Pablo that he was within miles of that spot.


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 Felipe's last and greatest revelation was the little bell that hung in the arch of the vault, to be connected by a string with Pablo's house. The string would be available to the old man's hand from many places, Felipe said. The cord that had moved the bell and warned the Franciscans was rotted away now; Pablo would run another one without delay.

It seemed a rather childish arrangement to Henderson, but, as Felipe had such evident pride and confidence in it, he tried to make it appear that he believed it a most masterly contrivance.

"Here we can lie," said Felipe, "until they believe we have gone from the country in some mysterious way and relax their vigilance. Then we can slip out, and make our way to Monterey. This is better than making a dash with them hot at our heels. It is the crafty, Franciscan way."

"There is good argument in it," Henderson admitted, feeling that it was so.

"And if some traitor betrays us, or some spy creeps like a snake and luck leads him to us, then the bell will warn us, we can ride away before they can arrive, and be miles ahead of them."

"That is excellent, Felipe," Henderson declared. He went to the door of the retreat, doubly hidden inside a high adobe wall and the young trees and shrubs which had sprung thickly there. It was concealed so well that one might pass within a yard of it and be no wiser.

"Asleep or awake the bell will warn us, for they


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 must pass the house first to come here. Don't you think it is admirable, Gabriel?"

"Admirable!" said Gabriel warmly. "I wonder, Felipe, if those damned scoundrels took that girl to the pueblo and locked her in their dirty jail?"


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ES, the governor himself came in a carriage behind the soldiers, and took the poor angel away. That was not more than an hour after you left with Don Gabriel. It was a thing to make the heart rage, and not even Doña Carlota permitted to go with her."

Cecilia spoke in low tones, distrustful of every shadow that moved. She had taken her visitors into her cabin, which was the farthest removed of all the laborers' dwellings from Don Abrahan's mansion on account of the corral for the goats which ran out from its corners. As they talked with her in the dark, the sound of the goats champing the cuds they had gathered during the day, the shuffling of the feet of such restless ones as had not yet lain down to their night's repose, came into the little cabin. Liseta could be heard breathing in her throbbing excitement where she sat on her cowhide cot against the wall, her head dimly seen against the open window.

"What is Don Abrahan doing about it?" Gabriel inquired, speaking softly, impressed by Cecilia's caution.

"Nothing, Don Gabriel. There seems to be some new arrangement. General Verdugo, as you


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 know, has been put out of his place by the governor."

"Verdugo out?" Felipe exclaimed in incredulous surprise. "Who told you this, Cecilia?"

"One of the soldiers, Don Felipe. There is nothing a soldier will not tell me if I can speak a little while with him. My husband was a soldier in his day."

"Then Colonel Ybarra is in command. He is worse, Gabriel, far worse, than the other."

"Is it possible you have heard nothing of this big news?" Cecilia asked, in vast surprise. "I thought they must know at Monterey by now that Roberto has been made general by the governor."

"Roberto! What general, even of forty men!"

Henderson was almost amused, in spite of Helena Sprague's uncertain situation in the hands of this vengeful youth.

"He is a military man; he held the rank of colonel," Felipe explained, no amusement in the matter of Roberto's elevation apparent to him.

"There is a cannon," said Cecilia gravely. "I have heard it will shoot through the wall of a church."

"It is an admirable arrangement they have made of it," Felipe said. "Don Abrahan must have given up all his share in the division of Helena's estate to the governor. He could afford it, having the civil and military power now in his hands."

"There is justice to be thankful for in one quar-


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 ter," Cecilia said. "Simon is still in the prison where you locked him, Don Gabriel. No key can be found to let him out. I pray God it is lost forever!"

"What does it mean when they wouldn't permit her aunt to go with her, Felipe? What do you suppose they've done, or design to do?"

Gabriel's concern was great. In his agitation he went to the door, closed in Cecilia's caution, opened it and stood gazing toward the pueblo as if for his answer out of the dark.

Cecilia came softly, pushed him back into the room, and closed the door.

"There will be somebody passing," she said.

As for the window, that did not seem to trouble her. It opened upon the goat corral; the strong scent of the animals came in with the slow breeze.

"It has a bad color, that," Felipe said, trouble in his tone.

"I'm going to the pueblo to find out," Gabriel declared.

"Don Gabriel, Don Gabriel! It would be death—to go!"

Liseta sprang from her cot as she made this protest, the first word she had spoken since the visitors entered the door.

"She speaks the truth," Cecilia whispered.

"I heard Don Roberto swear he would burn you, tied to the very cross where you tied him today," Liseta said.

"Thanks for your warning, Liseta; you always


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 were a good friend to me," Gabriel said. "But I must go; I am burning up my time."

"Soldiers were sent to hunt for you and Don Felipe. I saw them from the hill when I gathered in the goats this evening."

"Which way were they going, Liseta?"

"Toward the pass, Don Gabriel. I heard Don Abrahan say you would try to escape to the north."

"That is very good," Gabriel said, touching Felipe's arm in the dark. "Every one of them that's away will be one less for us to face in the pueblo. Are you ready, Felipe?"

"There will be a matter of an extra horse for Helena," Felipe said. "Who watches the stable, since Simon is in prison, Cecilia?"

"Old Vincente, the carpenter, has been around this evening. I doubt if anybody watches."

"There will be no difficulty," Felipe said.

Felipe left something in Cecilia's hand as they parted from her at the door, that was more than unemphasized thanks to the poor widow living out her hopeless peonage under the beneficent Don Abrahan's shadow.

"Don Felipe," she said earnestly, "tell me, is it true the Americans are coming to set free all the poor ones who are enslaved by unjust debts?"

"It is true, Cecilia."

"I pray the sun may not set three times before they come!" she said.

There seemed the very breath of romance in the night as Henderson and Felipe rode away toward


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 the pueblo, Felipe leading the horse taken from Don Abrahan's corral. To Henderson it seemed as if the dark were charged with the suspense of mystery. There was the scent of lemon blossoms from Don Abrahan's orchard, and of jasmine from some humble door.

"It will be a late moon," said Felipe.

"So much the better for us."

"Yes, people will be awake until midnight these times, talking over this great news of war. I have a friend who will know all that has happened today. His home is behind the church; we can leave our horses a little way off to keep any suspicion of complicity from his door."

The pueblo of Los Angeles, called by the Franciscans who founded the place La Ciudad de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles, or The City of Our Lady Queen of the Angels, was a village of a few score houses at that time, most of them the mean dwellings of the poor. These were clustered around the church, which stood on one side of the plaza, the governor's mansion, so called, and the military barracks facing it. This plaza was the gulf between consequence and obscurity, most of the influential and wealthy people living on the governor's side.

All about the little city were the pastures and fields, orange orchards and vineyards of the great estates of the hidalgos who had received their grants from the king. Many of these estates had passed from the grantees' hands into the possession


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 of others, generally less worthy, in the rebellion against the authority of Spain, yet the face of things had not changed, the new owners being no more progressive than the old.

It was not yet midnight when Henderson and Felipe rode into the town. Contrary to Felipe's prediction, there was no waking over the news. The houses were dark and silent, even the house of Felipe's friend.

"This is a strange business," said Felipe, his voice made low as if he stood among sleepers.

They had come to a halt a little distance from his friend's house, a white-plastered adobe of considerable size, which stood in a grove of orange and fig trees. The wasted moon was then rising redly above the valley of San Gabriel; its faint light discovered the dark masses of the orange trees, the white arms of the fig trees. It also was strong enough to make their present situation one of insecurity from the eyes of any person who might pass, or come to the window of the neighboring house a little way along the thinly-built street.

"If you will take the horses back among the oak trees," Felipe suggested, pointing to an unfenced common that seemed to stretch away into the wilds, "I will sound on his door and see if he will come."

Henderson withdrew to the shadow of the oaks, where he dismounted, holding the reins of the three horses to be ready for any emergency. If he distrusted Felipe a little, surely he was not to be blamed, having had his lesson in treachery and


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 betrayal so lately. The house to which Felipe was supposed to have gone displayed no light; there was not so much as the bark of a dog to break the straining pitch of Henderson's expectation as he subdued his breath to listen.

Felipe had not gone to betray him to the authorities. Henderson abased himself in his own conscience for harboring such a suspicion when he heard his little friend returning with cautious tread. It seemed that he had been gone long enough to gather not only the history of one day, but of all the years since the founding of the pueblo.

"Here is an unexpected thing!"

These were Felipe's words as he came up in high excitement. He touched Henderson's arm, as if to calm him for the revelation he was about to make.

"What have you found out, Felipe?" Henderson inquired, far steadier in voice and pulse than his friend.

"There has been a disagreement already between the governor and his new general, and the general, determined to have his way, has suspended the civil law."

"You mean the town is under martial law, Felipe?"

"That is it. Here is a difficulty, a great difficulty, unforeseen."

"What have they done with Helena Sprague?"

Henderson's voice was not so steady when he asked this, the first and greatest thing in the hearts


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 of both of them, try as Felipe might to hold it back for whatever kind purpose that he would.

"The coward has tried and condemned her. She will be shot at the first light of dawn."

"Roberto? Would he dare defy his father to this length?"

"It is true, Gabriel. My friend is in confidence of a captain of the military; he has heard all. It was over this trial and condemnation that Roberto and the governor quarreled. The governor would not have gone so far."

"Where do they—where will it be done?"

Henderson's voice was dry, harsh. It seemed that the blasting fire of Roberto's vengeance had leaped and reached him, as Roberto had designed that it should do; it seemed that it had withered the youth in him, leaving only the ashes of a man.

"In the plaza, in the face of all the town. God's pity! we have come too late!"

"No, we are still in time."

"Time? Then for what, my poor Gabriel, but to see her die? Two of us against twenty-five soldiers! My heart breaks, but it is hopeless."

"Twenty-five? Are there only twenty-five soldiers here?" Henderson inquired eagerly.

"Maybe not more than twenty, still ten to one. They have sent several out to hunt for us. They are hurrying like bats through the night, guarding the pass and road."

"Your friend told you this?"

"Yes, he is a man who sees. Fifteen soldiers


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 were sent to overtake us on the road to Monterey, as Liseta told us; others were thrown around here and there."

"There may not be more than ten or fifteen in the garrison tonight."

"Too many, I am afraid, Gabriel. My hope was in the governor; I have friends that I might use as levers to move him, but since he has no power, that hope is gone."

"Your courage is not gone, Felipe," Henderson said, his own strength quick in his sinews again. The first withering shock that dried his heart and left his words weak on his lips was gone. The fire of determination leaped in him. Twenty men? He had the resourcefulness, inspired of Helena's peril, of a regiment.

"I did not know what we'd discover when we arrived here, Gabriel, but I did not expect this," said Felipe sadly. "I knew Helena would be a prisoner, but in the governor's house, I believed, where they would try to frighten her into surrendering her property, or to cajole her with promises of safety for you. But I am ready to stand with you, Gabriel, in anything, to storm the garrison if you say the word. What is your plan?"

"That must rise out of the circumstances, Felipe. Just now I have no plan. How long is it to dawn, do you think?"

"Not more than three hours."

"I'm going to see if I can find out anything. Will you wait for me here, Felipe?"


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 "But where? To find out what?"

"To the plaza, the garrison. Maybe some soldier drinking"

"Everything is closed—cantinas, all. At eight o'clock the doors were locked; everybody was driven from the streets. But they are not asleep in this pueblo tonight. In every house they sit waiting for the dawn."

"They are eager to see her die!"

"No, they pray that pity will move Roberto. They do not want her shot. It was the plea of the people that moved the governor until he would have pardoned her and set her free. Her youth excused her; she was misled by the Yankee who already had paid the price. And so Roberto, in his rage, becomes the tyrant. Would to God we had the cannon, Gabriel!"

"Will you lend me your knife, Felipe?"

"My rifle, too, if you need it."

"Only the knife. If I fail to come back before daylight, ride away and save yourself, my good friend. All will be at an end."

"Why should I stay here, like a groom, keeping company with horses, when there is the work of a man to be done?" Felipe demanded, the hurt of being left behind in his voice.

"You have risked too much for me, a stranger, already. I can't ask you to risk more."

"If you do not come back, Gabriel, I will hate my life. The horses will be as safe here alone as if I stood at their heads. We will leave them


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 farther back, behind my friend's corral. I know the plaza, I know the streets. Where you would be blind, I can see."

"I couldn't have asked you to take this hazard with me, Felipe. But I'd rather have you than the cannon."

Henderson felt the sincerity of Felipe's fiber, this strange little man whose hidalgo traditions outweighed by far his new republicanism. He recalled the many small acts of kindness Felipe had done him when their situations were quite different, when the mayordomo had nothing to gain by making the lot of Don Abrahan's alien peon any lighter by word or deed.

They led the horses farther back among the trees, tying them directly behind the mud wall of the corral. They would have the benefit of the wall, said Felipe, without compromising his friend, for even a thief might tie his horse behind an honest man's house. The only thing that he deplored was the distance from the plaza.

"If we are obliged to make a run, Gabriel, it will be a long one," he said. "As we go along, make note of the turnings and the landmarks, so you may find your way back if misfortune conspires to keep me behind."

"We must find where she is," said Henderson, desperately eager. "After that—whatever comes. But we must stick together if we can."

They kept to the shadows as they went toward the plaza, passing so quietly that the dogs did not


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 raise the alarm. The wind that had blown softly from the hills, moving the palm leaves in gentle chafing, with whisperings and sighs as from a people burdened with oppression, was still. A pause had come upon the night; the strident insects in dark acacia bowers were silent. Night murmured no more; its lispings were hushed, its plaints and its dreams dispersed. It was the slack tide in life that falls upon all nature before the miracle of dawn.

"If anybody in this pueblo is asleep, it is the sleep of fever," Felipe said. "Sucha great cruelty as this disturbs the repose. Many eyes will be at windows watching for the day. It will be fortunate if we are not discovered."

"I think even the dogs are asleep," Henderson muttered, his faith in the sympathy of that people very shallow.

"There is a garden beside the church, with peaches and apricots," Felipe said. "I believe the padres have no dogs, either asleep or awake. We can enter there and view the plaza and the barracks."

"Very good."

"Just here, then, we climb the wall. The padres do not trust their fruit to unlocked gates."

If anybody watched in pitiful anxiety for the tragedy of the dawn, the padres were not among them. Everything was hushed around the church and the priests' house that stood near it, white among the orchard trees. Through the barred and


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 locked gates of heavy timbers the two friends looked into the plaza.

The plaza was an empty square of hard-beaten earth, the parade ground for the garrison, the gathering place of the people at evenings and on days of fiesta. There were no trees in it, no growing thing, no seats, fountains nor ornamentations of any description. It was as barren as a desert, excepting only the posts set in the ground before certain shops and cantinas for hitching the horses of customers.

Starlight alone would have revealed this blank spot in all its bleakness; the added illumination of the bright strip of waning moon made it distinct in detail to the men who surveyed it through the padres' garden gate.

Henderson was as empty of any plan as the plaza itself, as he stood straining against the timbers of the gate. The necessity of quick and masterly decision pressed on him with hot frenzy; his thoughts were in a desperate surge. Every moment of the speeding time urged him to action, only to mock the desperate impotency of his hand.

What could two men do against twenty? as Felipe had asked. There the dark garrison lay, a long, low, dun building of adobe bricks, roofed over with red tiles. It had its secret places, its dungeons, Felipe had said. He was as helpless against its mysteries and thick, guarded walls as an ant.

"Every street emptying into the plaza has a


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 soldier at its mouth," Felipe whispered. "It's a good thing for us we came this way."

Somewhere within those walls the condemned prisoner waited with sad eyes for the dawn. Perhaps she had believed for an hour of mocking hope, that he whom she had given the benediction of her lips only a broken day past, would come in all the bravery of her faith, the strength of her belief, and take her from the peril that was drawing upon her to engulf her young life.

Whoever slept under that roof of dull-red tiles, it would not be Helena Sprague. In the morning—only a little while now till the break of day—they would bring her out, wan and steady, her eyes open wide in the hunger of life, in the straining to gather and store against the cold bleakness of the grave some little more of the allotment so brutally denied. Perhaps they might look, lighted for a moment with hope, for the face of a friend.

There would be no pity in Roberto now. What his dagger had failed of in the night, the soldiers' bullets would accomplish that coming dawn. No doubt the mean-hearted victor in this pitiful contest of honor, jealousy and cupidity lay sleeping now, refreshing himself to rise soon to the full enjoyment of his triumph.

There was a dim light in what Henderson knew must be the quarters of the officer of the guard, it being a window without bars. Close by was a door, set deep in the thick wall, a broad, high and ponderous thing like a gate in a city wall, before which a


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 sentry walked a short beat. That was the door they would open to bring her out to die.

With the thought, a door in Henderson's baffled mind sprung wide, revealing the thing that had eluded him.

"Back to the horses!" he whispered, clutching Felipe's arm. "Quick! let us go!"

Felipe felt the shock of a purpose in the quick words, the eagerness of the voice. His own despondent, sad heart jumped with the sound, with the thrilling grasp upon his arm.

"Have you seen something, Gabriel?" he asked, coming down eagerly from the gate.

"I have seen the way," Henderson replied. "To the horses—it is nearly day!"


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EOPLE began to collect in the plaza before the flare of dawn lifted. As the day grew, dimming the stars at the eastern horizon edge, and spread onward, engulfing the heavens, the arrivals increased. They came now in haste, with searching turnings of the head as if to question whether they had arrived too late, many women with rosaries in their hands, some men with the darkness of threat in their troubled faces.

All corners were directed by the sentinels, who still guarded each street where it opened into the square, to that side of the plaza where the church fronted. Here they stood in the chill of morning, shocked and afraid of this awful thing, yet lacking the courage either to interfere or deny the spectacle their presence.

At the first showing of the madrugada, the dawning of day, the general's proclamation had said, this traitress would be stood against the adobe wall and shot. Now it was broadening into day; the drum had not beaten, the door of the military jail had not opened.

"Perhaps General Garvanza has relented, perhaps he will spare her," a woman said. She was old; her hair was dusty-gray as trodden ashes;


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124

Now Gunther’s wife the meanwhile  was brooding ev’ry day:

“Why bears herself Dame Kriemhild in such a lofty way?

Is not her husband Siegfried a vassal of our own?

Scant service hath he paid us  in all these years agone!”

Within her heart this kept she,  and heed took thereanent.

Yet that they came not ever  did make her ill-content,

And that she got no service  out of Sir Siegfried’s land;

And wherefore this should happen  she fain would understand.

So of the king inquired she,  whether it might not be

That she the Lady Kriemhild  yet once again might see?

She privily spoke to him   of what her mind thus teased:

But when her lord had heard her,  he was but half well-pleased.

“And how are we to bring them,”  then said the mighty king,

“Here into this our country? that were no easy thing!

Too far from us they’re dwelling; to ask I am afraid.”

Then answer’d him Brunhilda,  with crafty air and said:

“However high and mighty a king’s man be, I say

That he his lord’s commandments  should never dare gainsay.”

And to himself smiled Gunther  whilst she laid down the law:

He had no thought of service  whene’er he Siegfried saw.


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 her mantilla had slipped from her head to her shoulders unnoticed.

"I saw her when they brought her," a younger woman said, and she was one whose hand seemed to have laid her child down to its pillow to slip away and stand with aching heart to wait the opening of the carcel door. "She is young and pretty; her hair is the color of wine-grapes. What a pity that bullets must tear her soft bosom and burst into her heart!"

"It is not a time of pity, doña; it is a time of war."

The speaker was a harsh, gray man, straight in the shoulders like one whose business had been arms. He turned with disfavor in his drawn brows, fixing the young woman with stern eyes.

"But there can be mercy, even in war," the woman insisted, undaunted by his glare.

"Yes, doña, but when the Yankees come, yelling like devils, what will you have to say about pity then? Who will pity you when they cut your throat and trample your children under their horses' feet? Ah, that will be another thing!"

"There must be an example," said another, and he also was old. "If this plotting with the enemy is permitted, every Yankee in this pueblo will turn on us and eat our hearts. This will be an example to them—this will keep them in their places."

"A pitiful example, then, Don Felix," one at his side declared, asperity in his voice. "It may be next to treason to say it, but to me this thing is


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 cowardly and unpardonable. If this tyrant Garvanza"

"Silence!" the old soldier rebuked him savagely. "I will not stand by and hear treason spoken in my ear!"

"Then, if the Americans would come, I would help them set that poor young lady free," the young man declared, defiance in his reckless mouth.

"If the general hears of this"

"Curse the general! No man fights a woman—only a coward does that."

All around there was the murmur of voices, pitched in the note of pity, of helpless, hopeless pity which, dear as it might be to one who must walk forth soon to die, could not stay for one moment the general's vindictive decree.

"This is the liberty we have under the republic!" one who appeared to be a laborer said, speaking sneeringly, his broken hat pushed back from his flushed brow. "We had no tyranny like this under the crown; no woman ever was led out to die before soldiers in those times."

"When the Americans come"

"Hasten the day!" said the workman fervently.

"It is said they are humane people."

"Humane! Have you heard of the black men bound in slavery, bought and sold like pigs? Tell me, then!"

"Don Ambrosio, I have heard. But they do not stand the black women, or even the black men, against the wall and shoot them."


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 "Yes, and you are a traitor in the core of your heart! I would report you to the general for half"

"No? Haven't you heard? Impossible that you haven't heard!"

The speaker raised his voice above the subdued murmuring, in his surprise, what seemed his avidity, to spread a piece of news. He was of the common class, a thin, acidulous man. The low babbling of voices fell silent as this man drew himself up and looked around on his neighbors, two hundred or more of them now, gathered before the church.

"What is it, innkeeper?" the one called Don Ambrosio demanded, out of his position of authority, it seemed.

"I thought everybody knew; I thought it must have spread like oil on water," the innkeeper said. "He came last night to my hotel, the messenger who brought the news to the governor. It is of so great"

"What foolishness!" said Don Ambrosio. "Speak!"

"The Americans, Don Ambrosio," said the innkeeper.

"What of them, animal?"

"They have taken Monterey!" said the innkeeper with triumphant malevolence, it seemed, stretching himself to his greatest height, straining to tiptoes to fairly throw the news in Don Ambrosio's face.


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 "It is a lie!" Don Ambrosio denied.

"Ask the governor, then. Or better—ask Don Michael. Here he comes."

"It is the shameful truth, Don Ambrosio," Don Michael, a portly man with sagging jaws, admitted. "The news reached me at midnight. There is one called General Fremont marching on this pueblo now."

"God save us!" said a woman.

"Your bank—our money in your bank, Don Michael!" another clamored.

"God knows!" said Don Michael, spreading wide his arms as if to show his own breast free of guile.

"Where are they? How near do they approach?" a small, sharp-faced man came elbowing forward to inquire.

"Close at hand, it is thought. They ride like the wind, the messenger said, Missouri men, hard scoundrels who do not even aim when they shoot, and never miss."

"What?" asked a soldier, pressing near, gun on shoulder, face eager for the right of it. "The Yankees, did you say?"

"Yes, soldier, a thousand of them, coming in a dust like the end of the world!"

It was the defiant young man who volunteered this, giving it to the soldier with excited breath. The soldier gulped it as if he had swallowed an oyster, turned and hurried away to spread the intelligence among his comrades, who were dusty,


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 red-eyed and weary from their long vigil of the night.

"By God!" the young man muttered; "I hope that will help little Felipe."

"The general has heard this; he is afraid," said one, expressing the hope that rose in the hearts of many.

The broad gate in the adobe wall surrounding the compound where the horses were kept, opened as this person spoke. Four horses appeared, drawing out acannon. One of the lead team was saddled, ridden by a soldier; another soldier rode on the limber of the small piece which they came wheeling into the plaza.

"That is for the Americans," said the soldierly old man. "Let them have a taste of that and we'll see how far they come. Good for General Garvanza—he is not asleep!"

"Over there is the place," said a woman, speaking almost in a whisper to another as they stood with heads drawn together, "there against the wall. They say the priest is still with her"

"I saw him go in long ago," an old woman volunteered. "They say it is his long prayers that delay"

"What a pity, and so young!"

The long roll of a drum sounded in the barracks. There was a noise of assembling men, of trampling feet. The soldiers in the plaza, eight of them there were, ten with the two who manned the cannon, stiffened to their duty, pushing the people


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 sternly back into a close-packed front opposite the compound wall where the tragedy was to be set.

Two soldiers came and stood at the carce] door, one on either side; others were issuing from the barracks where the drum clamored. The waiting people caught their breath with a sound like a sob when the door opened. There were two soldiers in front, two in the rear; between them Helena, a dark-robed priest beside her.

"She does not die for treason to her country, but for fidelity to one she loves," said the young man who had expressed his willingness to help set her free.

"It is well known that the general's jealousy has burned the heart out of him, leaving him as hollow as a barrel," the innkeeper said.

An officer came forward and assumed command of the party conducting the prisoner. There was a pause before the prison door, while the priest seemed taking his farewell of Helena, who lifted her face, so white it seemed radiant, and smiled.

"I thank God I am not in that squad!" said a soldier at the edge of the crowd. He wiped sweat from his forehead. Women gave him their blessing with their eyes.

Helena was dressed as she was when the soldiers tore her from Don Abrahan's house, in the simple white gown she had worn when she came to the window to talk with Henderson. Her head was bare, her abundant hair gathered with care into a girlish braid which hung across her shoulder and


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 down her bosom, as her hands had let it fall on the summons of the guard at her door. It gave her the appearance of having been interrupted in her toilet. The general was in such an urgent heat of vengeance that he would not spare her time to prepare to die.

The officer had his sword to his nose, a command on his lips. The priest fell back, to stand before the prison door with bowed head, eyes on the page of his little book. The guard closed in around the prisoner, the march to the place of execution began.

In the center of the plaza the two soldiers were bringing the cannon in place to command the road that came into the pueblo from the north. The horses were trampling with a great noise above the sad silence of the people, with a disturbance of yellow dust which rose like the pollen of wild mustard between those who stood waiting and the light of the east, where the sun seemed laggard out of pity. The drum in the barracks was still; soldiers were assembling before a certain door, which opened now to discharge General Garvanza, in green uniform laced with gold, his sword at his side.

"I cannot look!" said a woman, turning away.

The old mother whose mantilla had slipped from her ash-gray head sank softly to her knees in the dust. It was as if the leader of a flock of doves had settled down in a meadow. Scores of women bent to their knees, in a rustling of brocaded silk,