We broke camp at four in the morning, but in spite of our early start the next day's advance was marked by the most cruel heat. We had left the shade of the high lands and now pushed on over a plain of dry, burning sand, where nothing grew but naked bushes bristling with thorns, and tall grayish-green cacti with disjointed branching arms. They stretched out before us against the blazing sky, like a succession of fantastic telegraph-poles. We were marching over what had once been the bed of a great lake. Layers of tiny round pebbles rolled under our feet, and the rocks which rose out of the sand had been worn and polished by the water until they were as smooth as the steps of a cathedral. A mile away on each flank were dark green ridges, but ahead of us there was only a great stretch of glaring white sand. No wind was stirring, and not a drop of moisture. The air was like a breath from a brick oven, and the heat of the sun so fierce that if you touched your fingers to a gun-barrel it burned the flesh.

We did not escape out of this lime-kiln until three in the afternoon, when the trail again led us into the protecting shade of the jungle. The men plunged into it as eagerly as though they were diving into water.

About four o'clock we heard great cheering ahead of us, and word was passed to the rear that Miller had come in touch with Garcia's scouts. A half hour later, we marched into the camp of the revolutionists. It was situated about three miles outside of Santa Barbara, on the banks of the river where the trail crossed it at a ford. Our fellows made a rather fine appearance as they rode out of the jungle among the revolutionists; and, considering the fact that we had come to fight for them, I thought the little beggars might have given us a cheer, but they only stared at us, and nodded stupidly. They were a mixed assortment, all of them under-size and either broad or swarthy, with the straight hair and wide cheek-bones of the Carib Indian, or slight and nervous looking, with the soft eyes and sharp profile of the Spaniard. The greater part of them had deserted in companies from the army, and they still wore the blue-jean uniform and carried the rifle and accoutrements of the Government. To distinguish themselves from those soldiers who had remained with Alvarez, they had torn off the red braid with which their tunics were embroidered.

All the officers of the Foreign Legion rode up the stream with Laguerre to meet General Garcia, whom we found sitting in the shade of his tent surrounded by his staff. He gave us a most enthusiastic greeting, embracing the General, and shaking hands with each of us in turn. He seemed to be in the highest state of excitement, and bustled about ordering us things to drink, and chattering, gesticulating, and laughing. He reminded me of a little, fat French poodle trying to express his delight by bounds and barks. They brought us out a great many bottles of rum and limes, and we all had a long, deep drink. After the fatigue and dust of the day, it was the best I ever tasted. Garcia's officers seemed just as much excited over nothing as he was, but were exceedingly friendly, treating us with an exaggerated "comrades-in-arms" and "brother-officers" sort of manner. The young man who entertained me was quite a swell, with a tortoise-shell visor to his cap and a Malacca sword-cane which swung from a gold cord. He was as much pleased over it as a boy with his first watch, and informed me that it had been used to assassinate his uncle, ex- President Rojas. As he seemed to consider it a very valuable heirloom, I moved my legs so that, as though by accident, my sword fell forward where he could see it. When he did he exclaimed upon its magnificence, and I showed him my name on the scabbard. He thought it had been presented to me for bravery. He was very much impressed.

Garcia and Laguerre talked together for a long time and then shook hands warmly, and we all saluted and returned to the ford.

As soon as we had reached it Laguerre seated himself under a tree and sent for all of his officers.

"We are to attack at daybreak to-morrow morning," he said. "Garcia is to return along the trail and make a demonstration on this side of the town, while we are here to attack from the other. The plaza is about three hundred yards from where we will enter. On the corner of the plaza and the main street there is a large warehouse. The warehouse looks across the plaza to the barracks, which are on the other side of the square. General Garcia's plan is that our objective point shall be this warehouse. It has two stories, and men on its roof will have a great advantage over those in the barracks and in the streets. He believes that when he begins his attack from this side, the Government troops will rush from the barracks and hasten toward the sound of the firing. At the same signal we are to hurry in from the opposite side of the town, seize the warehouse, and throw up barricades across the plaza. Should this plan succeed, the Government troops will find themselves shut in between two fires. It seems to be a good plan, and I have agreed to it. The cattle-path to the town is much too rough for our guns, so Captain Heinze and the gun detail will remain here and co-operate with General Garcia. Let your men get all the sleep they can now. They must march again at midnight. They will carry nothing but their guns and ammunition and rations for one meal. If everything goes as we expect, we will breakfast in Santa Barbara."

I like to remember the happiness I got out of the excitement of that moment. I lived at the rate of an hour a minute, and I was as upset from pure delight as though I had been in a funk of abject terror. And I was scared in a way, too, for whenever I remembered I knew nothing of actual fighting, and of what chances there were to make mistakes, I shivered down to my heels. But I would not let myself think of thechances to make a failure, but rather of the opportunities of doing something distinguished and of making myself conspicuous. I laughed when I thought of my classmates at the Point with their eyes bent on a book of tactics, while here was I, within three hours of a real battle, of the most exciting of all engagements, an attack upon a city. A full year, perhaps many years, would pass before they would get the chance to hear a hostile shot, the shot fired in anger, which every soldier must first hear before he can enter upon his inheritance, and hold his own in the talk of the mess-table. I felt almost sorry for them when I thought how they would envy me when they read of the fight in the newspapers. I decided it would be called the battle of Santa Barbara, and I imagined how it would look in the head- lines. I was even generous enough to wish that three or four of the cadets were with me; that is, of course, under me, so that they could tell afterward how well I had led them.

At midnight we filed silently out of camp, and felt our way in the dark through the worst stretch of country we had yet encountered. The ferns rose above our hips, and the rocks and fallen logs over which we stumbled were slippery with moss. Every minute a man was thrown by a trailing vine or would plunge over a fallen tree-trunk, and there would be a yell of disgust and an oath and a rattle of accoutrements. The men would certainly have been lost if they had not kept in touch by calling to one another, and the noise we made hissing at them for silence only added to the uproar.

At the end of three hours our guides informed us that for the last half-mile they had been guessing at the trail, and that they had now completely lost themselves. So Laguerre sent out Miller and the native scouts to buskey about and find out where we were, and almost immediately we heard the welcome barking of a dog, and one of the men returned to report that we had walked right into the town. We found that the first huts were not a hundred yards distant. Laguerre accordingly ordered the men to conceal themselves and sent Miller, one of Garcia's officers, and myself to reconnoitre.

The moonlight had given way to the faint gray light which comes just before dawn, and by it we could distinguish lumps of blackness which as we approached turned into the thatched huts of the villagers. Until we found the main trail into the town we kept close to the bamboo fences of these huts, and then, still keeping in the shadows, we followed the trail until it turned into a broad and well-paved street.

Except for many mongrel dogs that attacked us, and the roosters that began to challenge us from every garden, we had not been observed, and, so far as we could distinguish, the approach to the town was totally unprotected. By this time the light had increased sufficiently for us to see the white fronts of the houses, and the long empty street, where rows of oil-lamps were sputtering and flickering, and as they went out, filling the clean, morning air with the fumes of the dying wicks. It had been only two weeks since I had seen paved streets, and shops, and lamp-posts, but I had been sleeping long enough in the open to make the little town of Santa Barbara appear to me like a modern and well-appointed city. Viewed as I now saw it, our purpose to seize it appeared credulous and grotesque. I could not believe that we contemplated such a piece of folly. But the native officer pointed down the street toward a square building with overhanging balconies. In the morning mist the warehouse loomed up above its fellows of one story like an impregnable fortress.

Miller purred with satisfaction.

"That's the place," he whispered; "I remember it now. If we can get into it, they can never get us out." It seemed to me somewhat like burglary, but I nodded in assent, and we ran back through the outskirts to where Laguerre was awaiting us. We reported that there were no pickets guarding our side of the town, and the building Garcia had designated for defence seemed to us most admirably selected.

It was now near to the time set for the attack to begin, and Laguerre called the men together, and, as was his custom, explained to them what he was going to do. He ordered that when we reached the warehouse I was to spread out my men over the plaza and along the two streets on which the warehouse stood. Porter was to mount at once to the roof and open fire on the barracks, and the men of B and C Troops were to fortify the warehouse and erect the barricades.

It was still dark, but through the chinks of a few of the mud huts we could see the red glow of a fire, and were warned by this to move forward and take up our position at the head of the main street. Before we advanced, skirmishers were sent out to restrain any of the people in the huts who might attempt to arouse the garrison. But we need not have concerned ourselves, for those of the natives who came to their doors, yawning and shivering in the cool morning air, shrank back at the sight of us, and held up their hands. I suppose, as we crept out of the mist, we were a somewhat terrifying spectacle, but I know that I personally felt none of the pride of a conquering hero. The glimpse I had caught of the sleeping town, peaceful and unconscious, and the stealth and silence of our movements, depressed me greatly, and I was convinced that I had either perpetrated or was about to perpetrate some hideous crime. I had anticipated excitement and the joy of danger, instead of which, as I tiptoed between the poor gardens, I suffered all the quaking terrors of a chicken thief.

We had halted behind a long adobe wall to the right of the main street, and as we crouched there the sun rose like a great searchlight and pointed us out, and exposed us, and seemed to hold up each one of us to the derision of Santa Barbara. As the light flooded us we all ducked our heads simultaneously, and looked wildly about us as though seeking for some place to hide. I felt as though I had been caught in the open street in my night-gown. It was impossible to justify our presence. As I lay, straining my ears for Garcia's signal, I wondered what we would do if the worthy citizen who owned the garden wall, against which we lay huddled, should open the gate and ask us what we wanted. Could we reply that we, a hundred and fifty men, proposed to seize and occupy his city? I felt sure he would tell us to go away at once or he would call the police. I looked at the men near me, and saw that each was as disturbed as myself. A full quarter of an hour had passed since the time set for the attack, and still there was no signal from Garcia. The strain was becoming intolerable. At any moment some servant, rising earlier than his fellows, might stumble upon us, and in his surprise sound the alarm. Already in the trail behind us a number of natives, on their way to market, had been halted by our men, who were silently waving them back into the forest. The town was beginning to stir, wooden shutters banged against stone walls, and from but just around the corner of the main street came the clatter of iron bars as they fell from the door of a shop. We could hear the man who was taking them down whistling cheerily.

And then from the barracks came, sharply and clearly, the ringing notes of the reveille. I jumped to my feet and ran to where Laguerre was sitting with his back to the wall.

"General, can't I begin now?" I begged. "You said D Troop was to go in first."

He shook his head impatiently. "Listen!" he commanded.

We heard a single report, but so faintly and from such a distance that had it not instantly been followed by two more we could not have distinguished it. Even then we were not certain. Then as we crouched listening, each reading the face of the others and no one venturing to breathe, there came the sharp, broken roll of musketry. It was unmistakable. The men gave a great gasp of relief, and without orders sprang to "attention." A ripple of rifle-fire, wild and scattered, answered the first volley.

"They have engaged the pickets," said Laguerre.

The volleys were followed by others, and volleys, more uneven, answered them still more wildly.

"They are driving the pickets back," explained Laguerre. We all stood looking at him as though he were describing something which he actually saw. Suddenly from the barracks came the discordant calls of many bugles, warning, commanding, beseeching.

Laguerre tossed back his head, like a horse that has been too tightly curbed.

"They are leaving the barracks," he said. He pulled out his watch and stood looking down at it in his hand.

"I will give them three minutes to get under way," he said. "Then we will start for the warehouse. When they come back again, they will find us waiting for them."

It seemed an hour that we stood there, and during every second of that hour the rifle-fire increased in fierceness and came nearer, and seemed to make another instant of inaction a crime. The men were listening with their mouths wide apart, their heads cocked on one side, and their eyes staring. They tightened their cartridge-belts nervously, and opened and shot back the breech-bolts of their rifles. I took out my revolver, and spun the cylinder to reassure myself for the hundredth time that it was ready. But Laguerre stood quite motionless, with his eyes fixed impassively upon his watch as though he were a physician at a sick-bed. Only once did he raise his eyes. It was when the human savageness of the rifle-fire was broken by a low mechanical rattle, like the whirr of a mowing-machine as one hears it across the hay-fields. It spanked the air with sharp hot reports.

"Heinze has turned the Gatlings on them," he said. "They will be coming back soon." He closed the lid of his watch with a click and nodded gravely at me. "You can go ahead now, Captain," he said. His tone was the same as though he had asked me to announce dinner.



IV

I jumped toward the street at the double, and the men followed me crowded in a bunch. I shouted back at them to spread out, and they fell apart. As I turned into the street I heard a shout from the plaza end of it and found a dozen soldiers running forward to meet us. When they saw the troops swing around the corner, they halted and some took cover in the doorways, and others dropped on one knee in the open street, and fired carefully. I heard soft, whispering sounds stealing by my head with incredible slowness, and I knew that at last I was under fire. I no longer felt like a boy robbing an orchard, nor a burglar. I was instead grandly excited and happy, and yet I was quite calm too. I am sure of this, for I remember I calculated the distance between us and the warehouse, and compared it with the two hundred and twenty-yard stretch in an athletic park at home. As I ran I noted also everything on either side of me: two girls standing behind the iron bars of a window with their hands pressed to their cheeks, and a negro with a broom in his hand crouching in a doorway. Some of the men stopped running and halted to fire, but I shouted to them to come on. I was sure if we continued to charge we could frighten off the men at the end of the street, and I guessed rightly, for as we kept on they scattered and ran. I could hear shouts and screams rising from many different houses, and men and women scuttled from one side of the street to the other like frightened hens.

As we passed an open shop some men inside opened a fusillade on me, and over my shoulder I just caught a glimpse of one of them as he dropped back behind the counter. I shouted to Von Ritter, who was racing with me, to look after them, and saw him and a half-dozen others swerve suddenly and sweep into the shop. Porter's men were just behind mine and the noise our boots made pounding on the cobblestones sounded like a stampede of cattle.

The plaza was an unshaded square of dusty grass. In the centre was a circular fountain, choked with dirt and dead leaves, and down the paths which led to it were solid stone benches. I told the men to take cover inside the fountain, and about a dozen of them dropped behind the rim of it, facing toward the barracks. I heard Porter give a loud "hurrah!" at finding the doors of the warehouse open, and it seemed almost instantly that the men of his troop began to fire over our heads from its roof. At the first glance it was difficult to tell from where the enemy's fire came, but I soon saw smoke floating from the cupola of the church on the corner and drifting through the barred windows of the barracks. I shouted at the men behind the benches to aim at the cupola, and directed those with me around the fountain to let loose at the barrack windows. As they rose to fire and exposed themselves above the rim of the fountain three of them were hit, and fell back swearing. The men behind the benches shouted at me to take cover, and one of the wounded men in the fountain reached up and pulled at my tunic, telling me to lie down. The men of B and C Troops were rolling casks out of the warehouse and building a barricade, and I saw that we were drawing all of the fire from them. We were now in a cross-fire between the church and the barracks, and were getting very much the worst of the fight. The men in the barracks were only seventy yards away. They seemed to be the ones chiefly responsible. They had piled canvas cots against the bars of the windows, and though these afforded them no protection, they prevented our seeing anything at which to shoot.

One of my men gave a grunt, and whirled over, holding his hand to his shoulder. "I've got it, Captain," he said. I heard another man shriek from behind one of the benches. Our position was becoming impossible. It was true we were drawing the fire from the men who were working on the barricade, which was what we had been sent out to do, but in three minutes I had lost five men.

I remembered a professor at the Point telling us the proportion of bullets that went home was one to every three hundred, and I wished I had him behind that fountain. Miller was lying at my feet pumping away with a Winchester. As he was reloading it he looked up at me, and shouted, "And they say these Central Americans can't shoot!" I saw white figures appearing and disappearing at the windows of almost every house on the plaza. The entire population seemed to have taken up arms against us. The bullets splashed on the combing of the fountain and tore up the grass at our feet, and whistled and whispered about our ears. It seemed utter idiocy to remain, but I could not bring myself to run back to the barricade.

In the confusion which had ensued in the barracks when Garcia opened the attack the men who ran out to meet him had left the gates of the barrack yard open, and as I stood, uncertain what to do, I saw a soldier pushing them together. He had just closed one when I caught sight of him. I fired with my revolver, and shouted to the men. "We must get inside those gates," I cried. "We can't stay here. Charge those gates!" I pointed, and they all jumped from every part of the plaza, and we raced for the barrack wall, each of us yelling as we ran. A half dozen of us reached there in time to throw ourselves against the gate that was just closing, and the next instant I fell sprawling inside the barrack yard.



We ran straight for the long room which faced the street, and as we came in at one end of it the men behind the cots fired a frightened volley at us and fled out at the other. In less than two minutes the barracks were empty, and we had changed our base from that cock-pit of a fountain to a regular fortress with walls two feet thick, with rifles stacked in every corner, and, what at that moment seemed of greatest importance, with a breakfast for two hundred men bubbling and boiling in great iron pots in the kitchen. I had never felt such elation and relief as I did over that bloodless victory. It had come when things looked so bad; it had come so suddenly and easily that while some of the men cheered, others only laughed, shaking each other's hands or slapping each other on the back, and some danced about like children. We tore the cots away from the windows and waved at the men behind the barricade, and they stood up and cheered us, and the men on the roof, looking very tall against the blue sky, stood up and waved their hats and cheered too. They had silenced the men in the cupola, and a sudden hush fell upon the plaza. It was easy to see that many sympathizers with the government had been shooting at us from the private houses. When they saw us take the barracks they had probably decided that the time had come to wipe off the powder-stains, and reappear as friends of the revolution. The only firing now was from where Garcia was engaged. Judging from the loudness of these volleys he had reached the outskirts of the town. I set half of my force to work piling up bags of meal behind the iron bars, and, in the event of fire, filling pails with water, and breaking what little glass still remained in the windows. Others I sent to bring in the wounded, and still others to serving out the coffee and soup we had found in the kitchen. After giving these orders I ran to the barricade to report. When I reached it the men behind it began to rap on the stones with the butts of their rifles as people pound with their billiard-cues when someone has made a difficult shot, and those on the roof leaned over and clapped their hands. It was most unmilitary, but I must say I was pleased by it, though I pretended I did not know what they meant.

Laguerre came to the door of the warehouse, and smiled at me.

"I'm glad you're still alive, sir," he said. "After this, when you get within seventy yards of the enemy, I hope you will be able to see him without standing up."

The men above us laughed, and I felt rather foolish, and muttered something about "setting an example."

"If you get yourself shot," he said, "you will be setting a very bad example, indeed. We can't spare anybody, Captain, and certainly not you." I tried to look as modest as possible, but I could not refrain from glancing around to see if the men had heard him, and I observed with satisfaction that they had.

Laguerre asked me if I could hold the barracks, and I told him that I thought I could. He then ordered me to remain there.

"Would you like a cup of coffee, General?" I asked. The General's expression changed swiftly. It became that of a very human and a very hungry man.

"Have you got any?" he demanded anxiously.

"If you can lend me some men," I said, "I can send you back eight gallons." At this the men behind the barricades gave a great cheer of delight, and the General smiled and patted me on the shoulder.

"That is right," he said. "The best kind of courage often comes from a full stomach. Run along now," he added, as though he were talking to a child, "run along, and don't fire until we do, and send us that coffee before we get to work again."

I called in all of my men from the side streets, and led them across to the barracks. I placed some of them on the roof and some of them on tables set against the inside of the wall in the yard.

As I did so, I saw Porter run across the plaza with about fifty of his men, and almost immediately after they had disappeared we heard cheering, and he returned with Captain Heinze. They both ran toward General Laguerre, and Porter then came across to me, and told me that the government troops were in full flight, and escaping down the side streets into the jungle. They were panic-stricken and were scattering in every direction, each man looking after his own safety. For the next two hours I chased terrified little soldiers all over the side of the town which had been assigned me, either losing them at the edge of the jungle, or dragging them out of shops and private houses. No one was hurt. It was only necessary to fire a shot after them to see them throw up their hands. By nine o'clock I had cleaned up my side of the town, and returned to the plaza. It was now so choked with men and mules that I was five minutes in forcing my way across. Garcia's troops had marched in, and were raising a great hullabaloo, cheering and shouting, and embracing the townspeople, whom they had known during their former occupation, and many of whom were the same people who had been firing at us. I found Laguerre in counsel with Garcia, who was in high spirits, and feeling exceedingly pleased with himself. He entirely ignored our part in taking the town, and talked as though he had captured it single-handed. The fact that the government troops had held him back until we threatened them in the rear he did not consider as important. I resented his swagger and the way he patronized Laguerre, but the General did not seem to notice it, or was too well satisfied with the day's work to care. While I was at head- quarters our scouts came in to report that the enemy was escaping along the trail to Comyagua, and that two of their guns had stalled in the mud, not one mile out from Santa Barbara. This was great news, and to my delight I was among those who hurried out to the place where the guns were supposed to be. We found them abandoned and stuck in the mud, and captured them without firing a shot. A half hour later we paraded our prizes in a triumphal procession through the streets of Santa Barbara, and were given a grand welcome by the allies and the townspeople. I had never witnessed such enthusiasm, but it was not long before I found out the cause of it. In our absence everybody had been celebrating the victory with aguardiente, and half of Garcia's warriors had become so hopelessly drunk that they were lying all over the plaza, and their comrades were dancing and tramping upon them.

I found that this orgy had put Laguerre in a fine rage, and I heard him send out the provost guard with orders to throw all the drunken men into the public corral for lost mules.

When he learned of this Garcia was equally indignant. The matter ended with Laguerre's locking up Garcia's soldiers with our prisoners-of-war in the yard barracks, where they sang and shouted and fought until they were exhausted and went to sleep.

There was still much drink left on requisition, but the conquering heroes had taken everything there was to eat, and for some time I wandered around seeking for food before I finally discovered Miller, Von Ritter, and Aiken in the garden of a private house enjoying a most magnificent luncheon. I begged a share on the ground that I had just overcome two helpless brass cannon, and they gave me a noisy welcome, and made a place for me. I was just as happy as I was hungry, and I was delighted to find someone with whom I could discuss the fight. For an hour we sat laughing and drinking, and each talking at the top of his voice and all at the same time. We were as elated as though we had captured the city of London.

Of course Aiken had taken no part in the fight, and of course he made light of it, which was just the sort of thing he would do, and he especially poked fun at me and at my charge on the barracks. He called it a "grand-stand play," and said I was a "gallery fighter." He said the reason I ran out into the centre of the plaza was because I knew there was a number of women looking out of the windows, and he pretended to believe that when we entered the barracks they were empty, and that I knew they were when I ordered the charge.

"It was the coffee they were after," he declared. "As soon as Macklin smelt the coffee he drew his big gilt sword and cried, 'Up, my men, inside yon fortress a free breakfast awaits us. Follow your gallant leader!' and they never stopped following until they reached the kitchen. They're going to make Macklin a bugler," he said, "so that after this he can blow his own trumpet without anyone being allowed to interrupt him."

I was glad to find that I could take what Aiken said of me as lightly as did the others. Since the fight his power to annoy me had passed. I knew better than anyone else that at one time during the morning I had been in a very tight place, but I had stuck to it and won out. The knowledge that I had done so gave me confidence in myself—not that I have ever greatly lacked it, but it was a new kind of confidence. It made me feel older, and less inclined to boast. In this it also helped out my favorite theory that it must be easy for the man who has done something to be modest. After he has proved himself capable in the eyes of his comrades he doesn't have to go about telling them how good he is. It is a saying that heroes are always modest, but they are not really modest. They just keep quiet, because they know their deeds are better talkers than they are.

Miller and I had despatched an orderly to inform Laguerre of our whereabouts, and at three o'clock in the afternoon the man returned to tell us that we were to join the General in the plaza. On arriving there we found the column already drawn up in the order of march, and an hour later we filed out of the town down the same street by which we had entered it that morning, and were cheered by the same people who eight hours before had been firing upon us. We left five hundred of Garcia's men to garrison the place and prevent the townspeople from again changing their sympathies, and continued on toward Tegucigalpa with Garcia and the remainder of his force as our main body, and with the Legion in the van. We were a week in reaching Comyagua, which was the only place that we expected would offer any resistance until we arrived outside of the capital. During that week our march was exactly similar to the one we had made from the camp to Santa Barbara. There was the same rough trail, the jungle crowding close on either flank, the same dusty villages, the same fierce heat. At the villages of Tabla Ve and at Seguatepec our scouts surprised the rear guard of the enemy and stampeded it without much difficulty, and with only twenty men wounded. As usual we had no one to thank for our success in these skirmishes but ourselves, as Garcia's men never appeared until just as the fight was over, when they would come running up in great excitement. Laguerre remarked that they needed a better knowledge of the bugle calls, as they evidently mistook our "Cease firing" for "Advance."

The best part of that week's march lay in the many opportunities it gave me to become acquainted with my General. The more I was permitted to be with him the longer I wanted to be always with him, and with no one else. After listening to Laguerre you felt that a talk with the other men was a waste of time. There was nothing apparently that he did not know of men and events, and his knowledge did not come from books, but at first hand, from contact with the men, and from having taken part in the events.

After we had pitched camp for the night the others would elect me to go to his tent, and ask if we could come over and pay our respects. They always selected me for this errand, because they said it was easy to see that I was his favorite.

When we were seated about him on the rocks, or on ammunition boxes, or on the ground, I would say, "Please, General, we want to hear some stories," and he would smile and ask, "What sort of stories?" and each of us would ask for something different. Some would want to hear about the Franco-Prussian war, and others of the Fall of Plevna or Don Carlos or Garibaldi, or of the Confederate generals with whom Laguerre had fought in Egypt.

When the others had said good-night he would sometimes call me back on the pretence of giving me instructions for the morrow, and then would come the really wonderful stories—the stories that no historian has ever told. His talk was more educational than a library of histories, and it filled me with a desire to mix with great people—to be their companion as he had been, to have kings and pretenders for my intimates. When one listened it sounded easy of accomplishment. It never seemed strange to him that great rulers should have made a friend of a stray soldier of fortune, an Irish adventurer—for Laguerre's mother was Irish; his father had been Colonel Laguerre, and once Military Governor of Algiers—and given him their confidence. And yet I could see why they should do so, for just the very reason that he took their confidence as a matter of course, knowing that his loyalty would always be above suspicion. He had a great capacity for loyalty. There was no taint in it of self-interest, nor of snobbishness. He believed, for instance, in the divine right of kings; and from what he let fall we could see that he had given the most remarkable devotion not only to every cause for which he had fought, but to the individual who represented it. That in time each of these individuals had disappointed him had in no way shaken his faith in the one to whom he next offered his sword. His was a most beautiful example of modesty and of faith in one's fellowman. It was during this week, and because of these midnight talks with him around the campfire, that I came to look up to him, and love him like a son.

But during that same week I was annoyed to find that many of our men believed the version which Aiken had given of my conduct at Santa Barbara. There were all sorts of stories circulating through the Legion about me. They made me out a braggart, a bully, and a conceited ass—indeed, almost everything unpleasant was said of me except that I was a coward. Aiken, of course, kindly retold these stories to me, either with the preface that he thought I ought to know what was being said of me, or that he thought the stories would amuse me. I thanked him and pretended to laugh, but I felt more like punching his head. People who say that women are gossips, and that they delight in tearing each other to pieces, ought to hear the talk of big, broad- shouldered men around camp-fires. If you believe what they say, you would think that every officer had either bungled or had funked the fight. And when a man really has performed some act which cannot be denied they call him a "swipe," and say he did it to gain promotion, or to curry favor with the General. Of course, it may be different in armies officered by gentlemen; but men are pretty much alike all the world over, and I know that those in our Legion were as given to gossip and slander as the inmates of any Old Woman's Home. I used to say to myself that so long as I had the approval of Laguerre and of my own men and of my conscience I could afford not to mind what the little souls said; but as a matter of fact I did mind it, and it angered me exceedingly. Just as it hurt me at the Point to see that I was not popular, it distressed me to find that the same unpopularity had followed me into the Legion. The truth is that the officers were jealous of me. They envied me my place as Adjutant, and they were angry because Laguerre assigned one so much younger than themselves to all the most important duties. They said that by showing favoritism he was weakening his influence with the men and that he made a "pet" of me. If he did I know that he also worked me five times as hard as anyone else, and that he sent me into places where no one but himself would go. The other officers had really no reason to object to me personally. I gave them very little of my company, and though I spoke pleasantly when we met I did not associate with them. Miller and Von Ritter were always abusing me for not trying to make friends; but I told them that, since the other officers spoke of me behind my back as a cad, braggart, and snob, the least I could do was to keep out of their way.

I was even more unpopular with the men, but there was a reason for that; for I was rather severe with them, and imposed as strict a discipline on them as that to which I had been accustomed at West Point. The greater part of them were ne'er-do-wells and adventurers picked up off the beach at Greytown, and they were a thoroughly independent lot, reckless and courageous; but I doubt if they had ever known authority or restraint, unless it was the restraint of a jail. With the men of my own troop I got on well enough, for they saw I understood how to take care of them, and that things went on more smoothly when they were carried out as I had directed, so they obeyed me without sulking. But with the men of the troops not directly under my command I frequently met with trouble; and on several occasions different men refused to obey my orders as Adjutant, and swore and even struck at me, so that I had to knock them down. I regretted this exceedingly, but I was forced to support my authority in some way. After learning the circumstances Laguerre exonerated me, and punished the men. Naturally, this did not help me with the volunteers, and for the first ten days after I had joined the Legion I was the most generally disliked man in it. This lasted until we reached Comyagua, when something happened which brought the men over to my side. Indeed, I believe I became a sort of a hero with them, and was nearly as popular as Laguerre himself. So in the end it came out all right, but it was near to being the death of me; and, next to hanging, the meanest kind of a death a man could suffer.

When this incident occurred, which came so near to ending tragically for me, we had been trying to drive the government troops out of the cathedral of Comyagua. It was really a church and not a cathedral, but it was so much larger than any other building we had seen in Honduras that the men called it "The Cathedral." It occupied one whole side of the plaza. There were four open towers at each corner, and the front entrance was as large as a barn. Their cannon, behind a barricade of paving stones, were on the steps which led to this door.

I carried a message from Laguerre along the end of the plaza opposite the cathedral, and as I was returning, the fire grew so hot that I dropped on my face. There was a wooden watering-trough at the edge of the sidewalk, and I crawled over and lay behind it. Directly back of me was a restaurant into which a lot of Heinze's men had broken their way from the rear. They were firing up at the men in the towers of the cathedral. My position was not a pleasant one, for every time I raised my head the soldiers in the belfry would cut loose at me; and, though they failed to hit me, I did not dare to get up and run. Already the trough was leaking like a sieve. There was no officer with the men in the cafe, so they were taking the word from one of their own number, and were firing regularly in volleys. They fired three times after I took shelter. They were so near me that at each volley I could hear the sweep of the bullets passing about two yards above my head.

But at the fourth volley a bullet just grazed my cheek and drove itself into the wood of the trough. It was so near that the splinters flew in my eyes. I looked back over my shoulder and shouted, "Look out! You nearly hit me then. Fire higher."

One of the men in the cafe called back, "We can't hear you," and I repeated, "Fire higher! You nearly hit me," and pointed with my finger to where the big 44-calibre ball had left a black hole in the green paint of the trough. When they saw this there were excited exclamations from the men, and I heard the one who was giving the orders repeating my warning. And then came the shock of another volley. Simultaneously with the shock a bullet cut through the wide brim of my sombrero and passed into the box about two inches below my chin.

It was only then that I understood that this was no accident, but that someone in the restaurant was trying to murder me. The thought was hideous and sickening. I could bear the fire of the enemy from the belfry—that was part of the day's work; the danger of it only excited me; but the idea that one of my own side was lying within twenty feet of me, deliberately aiming with intent to kill, was outrageous and revolting.

I scrambled to my feet and faced the open front of the restaurant, and as I stood up there was, on the instant, a sharp fusillade from the belfry tower. But I was now far too angry to consider that. The men were kneeling just inside the restaurant, and as I halted a few feet from them I stuck my finger through the bullet hole and held up my hat for them to see.

"Look!" I shouted at them. "You did that, you cowards. You want to murder me, do you?" I straightened myself and threw out my arms, "Well, here's your chance," I cried. "Don't shoot me in the back. Shoot me now."

The men gaped at me in utter amazement. Their lips hung apart. Their faces were drawn in lines of anger, confusion, and dislike.

"Go on!" I shouted. "Fire a volley at that belfry, and let the man who wants me have another chance at me. I'll give the word. Make ready!" I commanded.

There was a pause and a chorus of protests, and then mechanically each man jerked out the empty shell and drove the next cartridge in place. "Aim!" I shouted. They hesitated and then raised their pieces in a wavering line, and I looked into the muzzles of a dozen rifles.

"Now then—damn you," I cried. "Fire!"

They fired, and my eyes and nostrils were filled with burning smoke, but not a bullet had passed near me.

"Again!" I shouted, stamping my foot. I was so angry that I suppose I was really hardly accountable for what I did.

"I told you you were cowards," I cried. "You can only shoot men in the back. You don't like me, don't you?" I cried, taunting them. "I'm a braggart, am I? Yes. I'm a bully, am I? Well, here's your chance. Get rid of me! Once again now. Make ready," I commanded. "Aim! Fire!"

Again the smoke swept up, and again I had escaped. I remember that I laughed at them and that the sound was crazy and hysterical, and I remember that as I laughed I shook out my arms to show them I was unhurt. And as I did that someone in the cafe cried, "Thank God!" And another shouted, "That's enough of this damn nonsense," and a big man with a bushy red beard sprang up and pulled off his hat.

"Now then," he cried. "All together, boys. Three cheers for the little one!" and they all jumped and shouted like mad people.

They cheered me again and again, although all the time the bullets from the belfry were striking about them, ringing on the iron tables and on the sidewalk, and tearing great gashes in the awnings overhead.

And then it seemed as though the sunlight on the yellow buildings and on the yellow earth of the plaza had been suddenly shut off, and I dropped into a well of blackness and sank deeper and deeper.

When I looked up the big man was sitting on the floor holding me as comfortably as though I were a baby, and my face was resting against his red beard, and my clothes and everything about me smelt terribly of brandy.

But the most curious thing about it was that though they told everyone in the Legion that I had stood up and made them shoot at me, they never let anyone find out that I had been so weak as to faint.

I do not know whether it was the brandy they gave me that later led me to charge those guns, but I appreciate now that my conduct was certainly silly and mad enough to be excused only in that way. According to the doctrine of chances I should have lost nine lives, and according to the rules governing an army in the field I should have been court-martialled. Instead of which, the men caught me up on their shoulders and carried me around the plaza, and Laguerre and Garcia looked on from the steps of the Cathedral and laughed and waved to us.

For five hours we had been lying in the blazing sun on the flat house- tops, or hidden in the shops around the plaza, and the government troops were still holding us off with one hand and spanking us with the other. Their guns were so good that, when Heinze attempted to take up a position against them with his old-style Gatlings, they swept him out of the street, as a fire-hose flushes a gutter. For five hours they had kept the plaza empty, and peppered the three sides of it so warmly that no one of us should have shown his head.

But at every shot from the Cathedral our men grew more unmanageable, and the longer the enemy held us back the more arrogant and defiant they became. Ostensibly to obtain a better shot, but in reality from pure deviltry, they would make individual sallies into the plaza, and, facing the embrasure, would empty their Winchesters at one of its openings as coolly as though they were firing at a painted bull's-eye. The man who first did this, the moment his rifle was empty, ran for cover and was tumultuously cheered by his hidden audience. But in order to surpass him, the next man, after he had emptied his gun, walked back very deliberately, and the third man remained to refill his magazine. And so a spirit of the most senseless rivalry sprang up, and one man after another darted out into the plaza to cap the recklessness of those who had gone before him.

It was not until five men were shot dead and lay sprawling and uncovered in the sun that the madness seemed to pass. But my charging the embrasure was always supposed to be a part of it, and to have been inspired entirely by vanity and a desire to do something more extravagantly reckless than any of the others. As a matter of fact I acted on what has always seemed to me excellent reasoning, and if I went alone, it was only because, having started, it seemed safer to go ahead than to run all the way back again. I never blamed the men for running back, and so I cannot see why they should blame me for having gone ahead.

The enemy had ceased firing shrapnel and were using solid shot. When their Gatlings also ceased, I guessed that it might be that the guns were jammed. If I were right and if one avoided the solid shot by approaching the barricade obliquely, there was no danger in charging the barricade. I told my troop that I thought the guns were out of order, and that if we rushed the barricade we could take it. When I asked for volunteers, ten men came forward and at once, without asking permission, which I knew I could not get, we charged across the plaza.

Both sides saw us at the same instant, and the firing was so fierce that the men with me thought the Gatlings had reopened on us, and ran for cover.

That left me about fifty feet from the barricade, and as it seemed a toss-up whichever way I went I kept going forward. I caught the combing of the embrasure with my hands, stuck my toes between the stones, and scrambled to the top. The scene inside was horrible. The place looked like a slaughter-yard. Only three men were still on their legs; the rest were heaped around the guns. I threatened the three men with my revolver, but they shrieked for mercy and I did not fire. The men in the belfries, however, were showing no mercy to me, so I dropped inside the wall and crawled for shelter beneath a caisson. But, I recognized on the instant that I could not remain there. It was the fear of the Gatlings only which was holding back our men, and I felt that before I was shot they must know that the guns were jammed. So I again scrambled up to the barricade, and waved my hat to them to come on. At the same moment a bullet passed through my shoulder, and another burned my neck, and one of the men who had begged for mercy beat me over the head with his sword. I went down like a bag of flour, but before my eyes closed I saw our fellows pouring out of the houses and sweeping toward me.

About an hour later, when Von Ritter had cleaned the hole in my shoulder and plastered my skull, I sallied out again, and at sight of me the men gave a shout, and picked me up, and, cheering, bore me around the plaza. From that day we were the best of friends, and I think in time they grew to like me.

Two days later we pitched camp outside of Tegucigalpa, the promised city, the capital of the Republic.

Our points of attack were two: a stone bridge which joins the city proper with the suburbs, and a great hill of rock called El Pecachua. This hill either guards or betrays the capital. The houses reach almost to its base and from its crest one can drop a shell through the roof of any one of them. Consequently, when we arrived, we found its approaches strongly entrenched and the hill occupied in force by the government artillery. There is a saying in Honduras, which has been justified by countless revolutions, and which dates back to the days of Morazan the Liberator, that "He who takes Pecachua sleeps in the Palace."

Garcia's plan was for two days to bombard the city, and if, in that time, Alvarez had not surrendered, to attack El Pecachua by night. As usual, the work was so divided that the more dangerous and difficult part of it fell to the Foreign Legion, for in his plan Garcia so ordered it that Laguerre should storm Pecachua, while he advanced from the plain and attacked the city at the stone bridge.

But this plan was never carried out, and after our first day in front of the Capital, General Garcia never again gave an order to General Laguerre.

After midnight on the evening of that first day Aiken came to the hut where we had made our head-quarters and demanded to see the General on a matter of life and death. With him, looking very uncertain as to the propriety of the visit, were all the officers of the Legion.

The General was somewhat surprised and somewhat amused, but he invited us to enter. When the officers had lined up against the walls he said, "As a rule, I call my own councils of war, but no doubt Mr. Aiken has some very good reason for affording me the pleasure of your company. What is it, Mr. Aiken?"

Instead of answering him, Aiken said, with as much manner as that of General Garcia himself, "I want a guard put outside this house, and I want the men placed far enough from it to prevent their hearing what I say." The General nodded at me, and I ordered the sentries to move farther from the hut. I still remember the tableau I saw when I re- entered it, the row of officers leaning against the mud walls, the candles stuck in their own grease on the table, the maps spread over it, and the General and Aiken facing each other from its either end. It looked like a drumhead court-martial.

When I had shut the door of the hut Aiken spoke. His tone was one of calm unconcern.

"I have just come from the Palace," he said, "where I have been having a talk with President Alvarez."

No one made a sound, nor no one spoke, but like one man everyone in the room reached for his revolver. It was a most enlightening revelation of our confidence in Aiken. Laguerre did not move. He was looking steadily at Aiken and his eyes were shining like two arc lamps.

"By whose authority?" he asked.

We, who knew every tone of his voice, almost felt sorry for Aiken.

"By whose authority," Laguerre repeated, "did you communicate with the enemy?"

"It was an idea of my own," Aiken answered simply. "I was afraid if I told you you would interfere. Oh! I'm no soldier," he said. He was replying to the look in Laguerre's face. "And I can tell you that there are other ways of doing things than 'according to Hardie.' Alvarez's officers came to me after the battle of Comyagua. They expected to beat you there, and when you chased them out of the city and started for the Capital they thought it was all up with them, and decided to make terms."

"With you?" said Laguerre.

Aiken laughed without the least trace of resentment, and nodded.

"Well, you give a dog a bad name," he said, "and it sticks to him. So, they came to me. I'm no grand-stand fighter; I'm not a fighter at all. I think fighting is silly. You've got all the young men you want to stop bullets for you, without me. They like it. They like to catch 'em in their teeth. I don't. But that's not saying that I'm no good. You know the old gag of the lion and the little mousie, and how the mouse came along and chewed the lion out of the net. Well, that's me. I'm no lion going 'round seeking whom I may devour.' I'm just a sewer rat. But I can tell you all," he cried, slapping the table with his hand, "that, if it hadn't been for little mousie, every one of you lions would have been shot against a stone wall. And if I can't prove it, you can take a shot at me. I've been the traitor. I've been the go- between from the first. I arranged the whole thing. The Alvarez crowd told me to tell Garcia that even if he did succeed in getting into the Palace the Isthmian Line would drive him out of it in a week. But that if he'd go away from the country, they'd pay him fifty thousand pesos and a pension. He's got the Isthmian Line's promise in writing.

"This joint attack he's planned for Wednesday night is a fake. He doesn't mean to fight. Nobody means to fight except against you. Every soldier and every gun in the city is to be sent out to Pecachua to trap you into an ambush. Natives who pretend to have deserted from Alvarez are to lead you into it. That was an idea of mine. They thought it was very clever. Garcia is to make a pretence of attacking the bridge and a pretence of being driven back. Then messengers are to bring word that the Foreign Legion has been cut to pieces at Pecachua, and he is to disband his army, and tell every man to look out for himself.

"If you want proofs of this, I'll furnish them to any man here that you'll pick out. I told Alvarez that one of your officers was working against you with me, and that at the proper time I'd produce him. Now, you choose which officer that shall be. He can learn for himself that all I'm telling you is true. But that will take time!" Aiken cried, as Laguerre made a movement to interrupt him. "And if you want to get out of this fix alive, you'd better believe me, and start for the coast at once—now—to-night!"

Laguerre laughed and sprang to his feet. His eyes were shining and the color had rushed to his cheeks. He looked like a young man masquerading in a white wig. He waved his hand at Aiken with a gesture that was part benediction and part salute.

"I do believe you," he cried, "and thank you, sir." He glanced sharply at the officers around him as though he were weighing the value of each.

"Gentlemen," he cried, "often in my life I have been prejudiced, and often I have been deceived, and I think that it is time now that I acted for myself. From the first, the burden of this expedition has been carried by the Foreign Legion. I know that; you, who fought the battles, certainly know it. We invaded Honduras with a purpose. We came to obtain for the peons the debt that is due them and to give them liberty and free government. And whether our allies run away or betray us, that purpose is still the same."

He paused as though for the first time it had occurred to him that the motives of the others might not be as his own.

"Am I right?" he asked, eagerly. "Are you willing to carry out that purpose?" he demanded. "Are you ready to follow me now, to-night—not to the coast"—he shouted—"but to the Capital—to the top of Pecachua?"

Old man Webster jumped in front of us, and shot his arm into the air as though it held a standard.

"We'll follow you to hell and back again," he cried.

I would not have believed that so few men could have made so much noise. We yelled and cheered so wildly that we woke the camp. We could hear the men running down the road, and the sentries calling upon them to halt. The whole Legion was awake and wondering. Webster beat us into silence by pounding the table with his fist.

"I have lived in this country for forty years," he cried, with his eyes fixed upon Laguerre, "and you are the first white man I have known who has not come into it, either flying from the law, or to rob and despoil it. I know this country. I know all of Central America, and it is a wonderful country. There is not a fruit nor a grain nor a plant that you cannot dig out of it with your bare fingers. It has great forests, great pasture-lands, and buried treasures of silver and iron and gold. But it is cursed with the laziest of God's creatures, and the men who rule them are the most corrupt and the most vicious. They are the dogs in the manger among rulers. They will do nothing to help their own country; they will not permit others to help it. They are a menace and an insult to civilization, and it is time that they stepped down and out, and made way for their betters, or that they were kicked out. One strong man, if he is an honest man, can conquer and hold Central America. William Walker was such a man. I was with him when he ruled the best part of this country for two years. He governed all Nicaragua with two hundred white men, and never before or since have the pueblo known such peace and justice and prosperity as Walker gave them."

Webster threw himself across the table and pointed his hand at Laguerre.

"And you, General Laguerre!" he cried, "and you? Do you see your duty? You say it calls you to-night to El Pecachua. Then if it does, it calls you farther—to the Capital! There can be no stopping half-way now, no turning back. If we follow you to-night to Pecachua, we follow you to the Palace."

Webster's voice rose until it seemed to shake the palm-leaf roof. He was like a man possessed. He sprang up on the table, and from the height above us hurled his words at Laguerre.

"We are not fighting for any half-breed now," he cried; "we are fighting for you. We know you. We believe in you. We mean to make you President, and we will not stop there. Our motto shall be Walker's motto, 'Five or none,' and when we have taken this Republic we shall take the other four, and you will be President of the United States of Central America."

We had been standing open-eyed, open-mouthed, every nerve trembling, and at these words we shrieked and cheered, but Webster waved at us with an angry gesture and leaned toward Laguerre.

"You will open this land," he cried, "with roads and railways. You will feed the world with its coffee. You will cut the Nicaragua Canal. And you will found an empire—not the empire of slaves that Walker planned, but an empire of freed men, freed by you from their tyrants and from themselves. They tell me, General," he cried, "that you have fought under thirteen flags. To-night, sir, you shall fight under your own!"

We all cheered and cheered again, the oldest as well as myself, and I cheered louder than any, until I looked at Laguerre. Then I felt how terribly real it was to him. Until I looked at him it had seemed quite sane and feasible. But when I saw how deeply he was moved, and that his eyes were brimming with pride and resolve, I felt that it was a mad dream, and that we were wicked not to wake him. For I, who loved him like a son, understood what it meant to him. In his talk along the trail and by the camp-fire he had always dreamed of an impossible republic, an Utopia ruled by love and justice, and I now saw he believed that the dreams had at last come true. I knew that the offer these men had made to follow him, filled him with a great happiness and gratitude. And that he, who all his life had striven so earnestly and so loyally for others, would give his very soul for men who fought for him. I was not glad that they had offered to make him their leader. I could only look ahead with miserable forebodings and feel bitterly sorry that one so fine and good was again to be disillusioned and disappointed and cast down.

But there was no time that night to look ahead. The men were outside the hut, a black, growling mob crying for revenge upon Garcia. Had we not at once surrounded them they would have broken for his camp and murdered him in his hammock, and with him his ignorant, deceived followers.

But when Webster spoke to them as he had spoken to us, and told them what we planned to do, and Laguerre stepped out into the moon-light, they forgot their anger in their pride for him, and at his first word they fell into the ranks as obediently as so many fond and devoted children.

In Honduras a night attack is a discredited manoeuvre. It is considered an affront to the Blessed Virgin, who first invented sleep. And those officers who that night guarded Pecachua being acquainted with Garcia's plot, were not expecting us until two nights later, when we were to walk into their parlor, and be torn to pieces. Consequently, when Miller, who knew Pecachua well, having served without political prejudice in six revolutions, led us up a by-path to its top, we found the government troops sleeping sweetly. Before their only sentry had discovered that someone was kneeling on his chest, our men were in possession of their batteries.

That morning when the sun rose gloriously, as from a bath, all pink and shining and dripping with radiance, and the church bells began to clang for early mass, and the bugles at the barracks sounded the jaunty call of the reveille, two puffs of white smoke rose from thecrest of El Pecachua and drifted lazily away. At the same instant a shell sang over the roofs of Tegucigalpa, howling jeeringly, and smashed into the pots and pans of the President's kitchen; another, falling two miles farther to the right, burst through the white tent of General Garcia, and the people in the streets, as they crossed themselves in fear, knew that El Pecachua had again been taken, and that that night a new President would sleep in the Palace.

All through the hot hours of the morning the captured guns roared and echoed, until at last we saw Garcia's force crawling away in a crowd of dust toward the hills, and an hour later Alvarez, with the household troops, abandoning the Capital and hastening after him.

We were too few to follow, but we whipped them forward with our shells.

A half-hour later a timid group of merchants and foreign consuls, led by the Bishop and bearing a great white flag, rode out to the foot of the rock and surrendered the city.

I am sure no government was ever established more quickly than ours. We held our first cabinet meeting twenty minutes after we entered the capital, and ten minutes later Webster, from the balcony of the Palace, proclaimed Laguerre President and Military Dictator of Honduras. Laguerre in turn nominated Webster, on account of his knowledge of the country, Minister of the Interior, and made me Vice- President and Minister of War. No one knew what were the duties of a Vice-President, so I asked if I might not also be Provost-Marshal of the city, and I was accordingly appointed to that position and sent out into the street to keep order.

Aiken, as a reward for his late services, was made head of the detective department and Chief of Police. His first official act was to promote two bare-footed policemen who on his last visit to the Capital had put him under arrest.

The General, or the President, as we now called him, at once issued a ringing proclamation in which he promised every liberty that the people of a free republic should enjoy, and announced that in three months he would call a general election, when the people could either reelect him, or a candidate of their own choice. He announced also that he would force the Isthmian Line to pay the people the half million of dollars it owed them, and he suggested that this money be placed to the credit of the people, and that they should pay no taxes until the sum was consumed in public improvements. Up to that time every new President had imposed new taxes; none had ever suggested remitting them altogether, and this offer made a tremendous sensation in our favor.

There were other departures from the usual procedure of victorious presidents which helped much to make us popular. One was the fact that Laguerre did not shoot anybody against the barrack wall, nor levy forced "loans" upon the foreign merchants. Indeed, the only persons who suffered on the day he came into power were two of our own men, whom I caught looting. I put them to sweeping the streets, each with a ball and chain to his ankle, as an example of the sort of order we meant to keep among ourselves.

Before mid-day Aiken sent a list, which his spies had compiled, of sympathizers with Alvarez. He guaranteed to have them all in jail before night. But Laguerre sent for them and promised them, if they remained neutral, they should not be molested. Personally, I have always been of the opinion that most of the persons on Aiken's list of suspects were most worthy merchants, to whom he owed money.

Laguerre gave a long audience to the cashier of the Manchester and Central American Bank, Limited, which finances Honduras, and assured him that the new administration would not force the bank to accept the paper money issued by Alvarez, but would accept the paper money issued by the bank, which was based on gold. As a result, the cashier came down the stair-case of the Palace three steps at a time, and later our censor read his cable to the Home Bank in England, in which he said that Honduras at last had an honest man for President. What was more to the purpose, he reopened his bank at three o'clock, and quoted Honduranian money on his blackboard at a rise of three per cent. over that of the day before. This was a great compliment to our government, and it must have impressed the other business men, for by six o'clock that night a delegation of American, German, and English shopkeepers called on the President and offered him a vote of confidence. They volunteered also to form a home-guard for the defence of the city, and to help keep him in office.

So, by dinner-time, we had won over the foreign element entirely, and the consuls had cabled their several ministers, advising them to advise their governments to recognize ours.

It was a great triumph for fair promises backed by fair dealing.

Although I was a cabinet minister and had a right to have my say I did not concern myself much with these graver problems of the Palace.

Instead, my first act was to cable to Beatrice that we were safe in the Capital and that I was second in command. I did not tell her I was Vice-President of a country of 300,000 people, because at Dobbs Ferry such a fact would seem hardly probable. After that I spent the day very happily galloping around the town with the Provost Guard at my heels, making friends with the inhabitants, and arranging for their defence. I posted a gun at the entrance to each of the three principal streets, and ordered mounted scouts to patrol the plains outside the Capital. I also remembered Heinze and the artillerymen who were protecting us on the heights of Pecachua, and sent them a moderate amount of rum, and an immoderate amount of canned goods and cigars. I also found time to design a wonderful uniform for the officers of our Legion—a dark-green blouse with silver facings and scarlet riding breeches—and on the plea of military necessity I ordered six tailors to sit up all night to finish them.

Uniforms for the men I requisitioned from the stores of the Government, and ordered the red facings changed to yellow.

The next day when we paraded in full dress the President noticed this, and remarked, "No one but Macklin could have converted a battery of artillery, without the loss of a single gun or the addition of a single horse, into a battalion of cavalry."

We had escorted the President back to the Palace, and I was returning to the barracks at the head of the Legion, with the local band playing grandly before me, and the people bowing from the sidewalks, when a girl on a gray pony turned into the plaza and rode toward us.

She was followed by a group of white men, but I saw only the girl. When I recognized even at a distance that she was a girl from the States my satisfaction was unbounded. It had needed only the presence of such an audience to give the final touch of pleasure to my triumphant progress. My new uniform had been finished only just in time.

When I first saw the girl I was startled merely because any white woman in Honduras is an unusual spectacle, but as she rode nearer I knew that, had I seen this girl at home among a thousand women, I would have looked only at her.

She wore a white riding-habit, and a high-peaked Mexican sombrero, and when her pony shied at the sound of the music she raised her head, and the sun struck on the burnished braid around the brim, and framed her face with a rim of silver. I had never seen such a face. It was so beautiful that I drew a great breath of wonder, and my throat tightened with the deep delight that rose in me.

I stared at her as she rode forward, because I could not help myself. If an earthquake had opened a crevasse at my feet I would not have lowered my eyes. I had time to guess who she was, for I knew there could be no other woman so beautiful in Honduras, except the daughter of Joseph Fiske. Had not Aiken said of her, "When she passes, the native women kneel by the trail and cross themselves?"

I rode toward her fearfully, conscious only of a sudden deep flood ofgratitude for anything so nobly beautiful. I was as humbly thankful as the crusader who is rewarded by his first sight of the Holy City, and I was glad, too, that I came into her presence worthily, riding in advance of a regiment. I was proud of our triumphant music, of our captured flags and guns, and the men behind me, who had taken them.

I still watched her as our column drew nearer, and she pulled her pony to one side to let it pass. I felt as though I were marching in review before an empress, and I all but lifted my sword-blade in salute.

But as we passed I saw that the look on her face was that of a superior and critical adversary. It was a glance of amused disdain, softened only by a smile of contempt. As it fell upon me I blushed to the rim of my sombrero. I felt as meanly as though I had been caught in a lie. With her eyes, I saw the bare feet of our negro band, our ill-fitting uniforms with their flannel facings, the swagger of our officers, glancing pompously from their half-starved, unkempt ponies upon the native Indians, who fawned at us from the sidewalks.

I saw that to her we were so many red-shirted firemen, dragging a wooden hose-cart; a company of burnt-cork minstrels, kicking up the dust of a village street; that we were ridiculous, lawless, absurd, and it was like a blow over my heart that one so noble-looking should be so blind and so unjust. I was swept with bitter indignation. I wanted to turn in my saddle and cry to her that beneath the flannel facings at which she laughed these men wore deep, uncared-for, festering wounds; that to march thus through the streets of this tiny Capital they had waded waist-high through rivers, had starved in fever camps, and at any hour when I had called on them had run forward to throw cold hands with death.

The group of gentlemen who were riding with the girl had halted their ponies by the sidewalk, and as I drew near I noted that one of them wore the uniform of an ensign in our navy. This puzzled me for an instant, until I remembered I had heard that the cruiser Raleigh was lying at Amapala. I was just passing the group when one of them, with the evident intent that I should hear him, raised his voice.

"Well, here's the army," he said, "but where's Falstaff? I don't see Laguerre."

My face was still burning with the blush the girl had brought to it, and the moment was not the one that any man should have chosen to ridicule my general. Because the girl had laughed at us I felt indignant with her, but for the same offence I was grateful to the man, for the reason that he was a man, and could be punished. I whirled my pony around and rode it close against his.

"You must apologize for that," I said, speaking in a low voice, "or I'll thrash you with this riding-whip."

He was a young man, exceedingly well-looking, slim and tall, and with a fine air of good breeding. He looked straight into my eyes without moving. His hands remained closed upon the pommel of his saddle.

"If you raise that whip," he said, "I'll take your tin sword away from you, and spank you with it."

Never in my life had anyone hurt me so terribly. And the insult had come before my men and his friends and the people in the street. It turned me perfectly cold, and all the blood seemed to run to my eyes, so that I saw everything in a red haze. When I answered him my voice sounded hoarse and shaky.

"Get down," I said. "Get down, or I'll pull you down. I'm going to thrash you until you can't stand or see."

He struck at me with his riding-crop, but I caught him by the collar and with an old trick of the West Point riding-hall threw him off into the street, and landed on my feet above him. At the same moment Miller and Von Ritter drove their ponies in between us, and three of the man's friends pushed in from the other side. But in spite of them we reached each other, and I struck up under his guard and beat him savagely on the face and head, until I found his chin, and he went down. There was an awful row. The whole street was in an uproar, women screamed, the ponies were rearing and kicking, the natives jabbering, and my own men swearing and struggling in a ring around us.

"My God, Macklin!" I heard Von Ritter cry, "stop it! Behave yourself!"

He rode at our men with his sword and drove them back into ranks. I heard him shout, "Fall in there. Forward. March!"

"This is your idea of keeping order, is it?" Miller shouted at me.

"He insulted Laguerre," I shouted back, and scrambled into the saddle. But I was far from satisfied. I, Vice-President, Minister of War, Provost-Marshal of the city, had been fighting with my fists in the open street before half the population. I knew what Laguerre would say, and I wondered hotly if the girl had seen me, and I swore at myself for having justified her contempt for us. Then I swore at myself again for giving a moment's consideration to what she thought. I was recalled to the present by the apparition of my adversary riding his pony toward me, partly supported and partly restrained by two of his friends. He was trembling with anger and pain and mortification.

"You shall fight me for this," he cried.

I was about to retort that he looked as though I had been fighting him, but it is not easy to laugh at a man when he is covered with dust and blood, and this one was so sorry a spectacle that I felt ashamed for him, and said nothing.

"I am not a street fighter," he raged. "I wasn't taught to fight in a lot. But I'll fight you like a gentleman, just as though you were a gentleman. You needn't think you've heard the last of me. My friends will act for me, and, unless you're a coward, you will name your seconds."

Before I could answer, Von Ritter had removed his hat and was bowing violently from his saddle.

"I am Baron Herbert Von Ritter," he said "late Aide-de-Camp to his Majesty, the King of Bavaria. If you are not satisfied, Captain Miller and myself will do ourselves the honor of calling on your friends."

His manner was so grand that it quite calmed me to hear him.

One of the men who was supporting my adversary, a big, sun-burned man, in a pith helmet, shook his head violently.

"Here, none of that, Miller," he said; "drop it. Can't you see the boy isn't himself? This isn't the time to take advantage of him."

"We are only trying to oblige the gentleman," said Miller. "The duel is the only means of defence we've left you people. But I tell you, if any of you insult our government again, we won't even give you that satisfaction—we'll ride you out of town."

The man in the pith helmet listened to Miller without any trace of emotion. When Miller had finished he laughed.

"We've every means of defence that an American citizen needs when he runs up against a crowd like yours," he said. He picked up his reins and turned his horse's head down the street. "You will find us at the Hotel Continental," he added. "And as for running us out of town," he shouted over his shoulder, "there's an American man-of-war at Amapala that is going to chase you people out of it as soon as we give the word."

When I saw that Miller and Von Ritter were arranging a duel, I felt no further interest in what the man said, until he threatened us with the warship. At that I turned toward the naval ensign to see how he received it.

He was a young man, some years older than myself, with a smooth face and fair, yellow hair and blue eyes. I found that the blue eyes were fixed upon me steadily and kindly. When he saw that I had caught him watching me he raised his hand smartly to the visor.

I do not know why, but it made the tears come to my eyes. It was so different from the salute of our own men; it was like being back again under the flag at the Point. It was the recognition of the "regular" that touched me, of a bona-fide, commissioned officer.

But I returned his salute just as stiffly as though I were a commissioned officer myself. And then a strange thing happened. The sailor-boy jerked his head toward the retreating form of my late adversary, and slowly stuck his tongue into his cheek, and winked. Before I could recover myself, he had caught up my hand and given it a sharp shake, and galloped after his friends.

Miller and I fell in at the rear of the column.

"Who were those men?" I asked.

"The Isthmian Line people, of course," he answered, shortly. "The man in the helmet is Graham, the manager of the Copan Silver Mines. They've just unloaded them on Fiske. That's why they're so thick with him."

"And who was the chap who insulted Laguerre?" I asked. "The one whose face I slapped?"

"Face you slapped? Ha!" Miller snorted. "I hope you'll never slap my face. Why, don't you know who he is?" he exclaimed, with a grin. "I thought, of course, you did. I thought that's why you hit him. He's young Fiske, the old man's son. That was his sister riding ahead of them. Didn't you see that girl?"



V

The day we attacked the capital Joseph Fiske and his party were absent from it, visiting Graham, the manager of the Copan Mines, at his country place, and when word was received there that we had taken the city, Graham urged Mr. Fiske not to return to it, but to ride at once to the coast and go on board the yacht. They told him that the capital was in the hands of a mob.

But what really made Graham, and the rest of the Copan people, and the Isthmian crowd, who now were all working together against us, so anxious to get Fiske out of Honduras, was that part of Laguerre's proclamation in which he said he would force the Isthmian Line to pay its just debts. They were most anxious that Fiske should not learn from us the true version of that claim for back pay. They had told him we were a lot of professional filibusters, that the demand we made for the half-million of dollars was a gigantic attempt at blackmail. They pointed out to him that the judges of the highest courts of Honduras had decided against the validity of our claim, but they did not tell him that Alvarez had ordered the judges to decide in favor of the company, nor how much money they had paid Alvarez and the judges for that decision. Instead they urged that Garcia, a native of the country, had submitted to the decree of the courts and had joined Alvarez, and that now the only people fighting against the Isthmian Line were foreign adventurers. They asked, Was it likely such men would risk their lives to benefit the natives? Was it not evident that they were fighting only for their own pockets? And they warned Fiske that while Laguerre was still urging his claim against this company, it would be unwise for the president of that company to show himself in Tegucigalpa.

But Fiske laughed at the idea of danger to himself. He said a revolution, like cock-fighting, was a national pastime, and no more serious, and that should anyone attempt to molest the property of the company, he would demand the protection of his own country as represented by the Raleigh.

He accordingly rode back to the capital, and with his son and daughter and the company's representatives and the Copan people, returned to the same rooms in the Hotel Continental he had occupied three days before, when Alvarez was president. This made it embarrassing for us, as the Continental was the only hotel in the city, and as it was there we had organized our officers' mess. In consequence, while there was no open war, the dining-room of the hotel was twice daily the meeting- place of the two opposing factions, and Von Ritter told me that until matters had been arranged with the seconds of young Fiske I could not appear there, as it would be "contrary to the code."

But our officers were not going to allow the Copan and Isthmian people to drive them out of their head-quarters, so at the table d'hote luncheon that day our fellows sat at one end of the room, and Fiske and Miss Fiske, Graham and his followers at the other. They entirely ignored each other. After the row I had raised in the street, each side was anxious to avoid further friction.

As I sat in the barracks over my solitary luncheon my thoughts were entirely on the duel.

It had been forced on me, so I accepted it; but it struck me as a most silly proceeding. Young Fiske had insulted my General and my comrades. He had done so publicly and with intent. I had thrashed him as I said I would, and as far as I could see the incident was closed. But Miller and Von Ritter, who knew Honduras from Fonseca Bay to Truxillo, assured me that, unless I met the man, who had insulted me before the people, our prestige would be entirely destroyed. To the Honduranian mind, the fact that I had thrashed him for so doing, would not serve as a substitute for a duel, it only made a duel absolutely necessary. As I had determined, if we did meet, that I would not shoot at him, I knew I would receive no credit from such an encounter, and, so far as I could see, I was being made ridiculous, and stood a very fair chance of being killed.

I sincerely hoped that young Fiske would apologize. I assured myself that my reluctance to meet him was due to the fact that I scorned to fight a civilian. I always classed civilians, with women and children, as non-combatants. But in my heart I knew that it was not this prejudice which made me hesitate. The sister was the real reason. That he was her brother was the only fact of importance. Had his name been Robinson or Brown, I would have gone out and shot at the calves of his legs most cheerfully, and taken considerable satisfaction in the notoriety that would have followed my having done so.

But I could never let his sister know that I had only fired in the air, and I knew that if I fought her brother she would always look upon me as one who had attempted to murder him. I could never speak to her, or even look at her again. And at that moment I felt that if I did not meet her, I could go without meeting any other women for many years to come. She was the most wonderful creature I had ever seen. She was not beautiful, as Beatrice was beautiful, in a womanly, gracious way, but she had the beauty of something unattainable. Instead of inspiring you, she filled you with disquiet. She seemed to me a regal, goddess-like woman, one that a man might worship with that tribute of fear and adoration that savages pay to the fire and the sun.

I had ceased to blush because she had laughed at us. I had begun to think that it was quite right that she should do so. To her we were lawless adventurers, exiles, expatriates, fugitives. She did not know that most of us were unselfish, and that our cause was just. She thought, if she thought of us at all, that we were trying to levy blackmail on her father. I did not blame her for despising us. I only wished I could tell her how she had been deceived, and assure her that among us there was one, at least, who thought of her gratefully and devotedly, and who would suffer much before he would hurt her or hers. I knew that this was so, and I hoped her brother would not be such an ass as to insist upon a duel, and make me pretend to fight him, that her father would be honest enough to pay his debts, and that some day she and I might be friends.

But these hopes were killed by the entrance of Miller and Von Ritter. They looked very grave.

"He won't apologize," Miller said. "We arranged that you are to meet behind the graveyard at sunrise to-morrow morning." I was bitterly disappointed, but of course I could not let them see that.

"Does Laguerre know?" I asked.

"No," Miller said, "neither does old man Fiske. We had the deuce of a time. Graham and Lowell—that young Middy from the Raleigh—are his seconds, and we found we were all agreed that he had better apologize. Lowell, especially, was very keen that you two should shake hands, but when they went out to talk it over with Fiske, he came back with them in a terrible rage, and swore he'd not apologize, and that he'd either shoot you or see you hung. Lowell told him it was all rot that two Americans should be fighting duels, but Fiske said that when he was in Rome, he did as Romans did; that he had been brought up in Paris to believe in duels, and that a duel he would have. Then the sister came in, and there was a hell of a row!"

"The sister!" I exclaimed.

Miller nodded, and Von Ritter and he shook their heads sadly at each other, as though the recollection of the interview weighed heavily.

"Yes, his sister," said Miller. "You know how these Honduranian places are built, if a parrot scratches his feathers in the patio you can hear it in every room in the house. Well, she was reading on the balcony, and when her brother began to rage around and swear he'd have your blood, she heard him, and opened the shutters and came in. She didn't stay long, and she didn't say much, but she talked to us as though we were so many bad children. I never felt so mean in my life."

"She should not have been there," said Von Ritter, stolidly. "It was most irregular."

"Fiske tried the high and mighty, brotherly act with her," Miller continued, "but she shook him up like a charge of rack-a-rock. She told him that a duel was unmanly and un-American, and that he would be a murderer. She said his honor didn't require him to risk his life for every cad who went about armed, insulting unarmed people—"

"What did she say?" I cried. "Say that again."

Von Ritter tossed up his arms and groaned, but Miller shook his fist at me.

"Now, don't you go and get wrathy," he roared. "We'll not stand it. We've been abused by everybody else on your account to-day, and we won't take it from you. It doesn't matter what the girl said. They probably told her you began the fight, and—"

"She said I was a cad," I repeated, "and that I struck an unarmed man. Didn't her brother tell her that he first insulted me, and struck me with his whip, and that I only used my fists. Didn't any of you tell her?"

"No!" roared Miller; "what the devil has that got to do with it? She was trying to prevent the duel. We were trying to prevent the duel. That's all that's important. And if she hadn't made the mistake of thinking you might back out of it, we could have prevented it. Now we can't."

I began to wonder if the opinion the Fiske family had formed of me, on so slight an acquaintance, was not more severe than I deserved, but I did not let the men see how sorely the news had hurt me. I only asked: "What other mistake did the young lady make?"

"She meant it all right," said Miller, "but it was a woman's idea of a bluff, and it didn't go. She told us that before we urged her brother on to fight, we should have found out that he has spent the last five years in Paris, and that he's the gilt-edged pistol-shot of the salle d'armes in the Rue Scribe, that he can hit a scarf-pin at twenty paces. Of course that ended it. The Baron spoke up in his best style and said that in the face of this information it would be now quite impossible for our man to accept an apology without being considered a coward, and that a meeting must take place. Then the girl ran to her brother and said, 'What have I done?' and he put his arm around her and walked her out of the room. Then we arranged the details in peace and came on here."

"Good," I said, "you did exactly right. I'll meet you at dinner at the hotel."

But at this Von Ritter protested that I must not dine there, that it was against the code.

"The code be hanged," I said. "If I don't turn up at dinner they'll say I'm afraid to show myself out of doors. Besides, if I must be shot through the scarf-pin before breakfast to-morrow morning, I mean to have a good dinner to-night."

They left me, and I rode to the palace to make my daily report to the president. I was relieved to find that both he and Webster were so deep in affairs of state that they had heard nothing of my row in the Plaza, nor of the duel to follow. They were happy as two children building forts of sand on the sea-shore. They had rescinded taxes, altered the tariffs, reorganized the law-courts, taken over the custom-houses by telegraph, and every five minutes were receiving addresses from delegations of prominent Honduranians. Nicaragua and Salvador had both recognized their government, and concession hunters were already cooling their heels in the ante-room. In every town and seaport the adherents of Garcia had swung over to Laguerre and our government, and our flag was now flying in every part of Honduras. It was the flag of Walker, with the five-pointed blood-red star. We did not explain the significance of the five points.

I reported that my scouts had located Alvarez and Garcia in the hills some five miles distant from the capital, that they were preparing a permanent camp there, and that they gave no evidence of any immediate intention of attacking the city. General Laguerre was already informed of the arrival of Mr. Fiske, and had arranged to give him an audience the following morning. He hoped in this interview to make clear to him how just was the people's claim for the half million due them, and to obtain his guaranty that the money should be paid.

As I was leaving the palace I met Aiken. He was in his most cynical mood. He said that the air was filled with plots and counter-plots, and that treachery stalked abroad. He had been unsuccessful in trying to persuade the president to relieve Heinze of his command on Pecachua. He wanted Von Ritter or myself put in his place.

"It is the key to the position," Aiken said, "and if Heinze should sell us out, we would have to run for our lives. These people are all smiles and 'vivas' to-day because we are on top. But if we lost Pecachua, every man of them would turn against us."

I laughed and said: "We can trust Heinze. If I had your opinion of my fellow-man, I'd blow my brains out."

"If I hadn't had such a low opinion of my fellow-man," Aiken retorted, "he'd have blown your brains out. Don't forget that."

"No one listens to me," he said. "I consider that I am very hardly used. For a consideration a friend of Alvarez told me where Alvarez had buried most of the government money. I went to the cellar and dug it up and turned it over to Laguerre. And what do you think he's doing with it!" Aiken exclaimed with indignation. "He's going to give the government troops their back pay, and the post-office clerks, and the peons who worked on the public roads."

I said I considered that that was a most excellent use to make of the money; that from what I had seen of the native troops, it would turn our prisoners of war into our most loyal adherents.

"Of course it will!" Aiken agreed. "Why, if the government troops out there in the hills with Alvarez knew we were paying sixty pesos for soldiers, they'd run to join us so quick that they'd die on the way of sunstroke. But that's not it. Where do we come in? What do we get out of this? Have we been fighting for three months just to pay the troops who have been fighting against us? Charity begins at home, I think."

"You get your own salary, don't you?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm not starving," Aiken said, with a grin. "There's a lot of loot in being chief-of-police. This is going to be a wide-open town if I can run it."

"Well, you can't," I laughed. "Not as long as I'm its provost marshal."

"Yes, and how long will that be?" Aiken retorted. "You take my advice and make money now, while you've got the club to get it with you. Why, if I had your job I could scare ten thousand sols out of these merchants before sunrise. Instead of which you walk around nights to see their front doors are locked. Let them do the walking. We've won, and let's enjoy the spoil. Eat, live, and be merry, my boy, for to- morrow you die."

"I hope not," I exclaimed, and I ran down the steps of the palace and turned toward the barracks.

"To-morrow you die," I repeated, but I could not arouse a single emotion. Portents and premonitions may frighten some people, but the only superstition I hold to is to believe in the luck of Royal Macklin.

"What if Fiske can hit a scarf-pin at twenty paces!" I said to myself, "he can't hit me." I was just as sure of it as I was of the fact that when I met him I was going to fire in the air. I cannot tell why. I was just sure of it.

The dining-room at the Continental held three long tables. That night our officers sat at one. Mr. Fiske and his party were at the one farthest away, and a dining-club of consular agents, merchants, and the Telegraph Company's people occupied the one in between. I could see her whenever the German consul bent over his food. She was very pale and tired-looking, but in the white evening frock she wore, all soft and shining with lace, she was as beautiful as the moonlit night outside. She never once looked in our direction. But I could not keep my eyes away from her. The merchants, no doubt, enjoyed their dinner. They laughed and argued boisterously, but at the two other tables there was very little said.

The waiters, pattering over the stone floor in their bare feet, made more noise than our entire mess.

When the brandy came, Russell nodded at the others, and they filled their glasses and drank to me in silence. At the other table I saw the same pantomime, only on account of old man Fiske they had to act even more covertly. It struck me as being vastly absurd and wicked. What right had young Fiske to put his life in jeopardy to me? It was not in my keeping. I had no claim upon it. It was not in his own keeping. At least not to throw away.

When they had gone and our officers had shaken hands with me and ridden off to their different posts, I went out upon the balcony by myself and sat down in the shadow of the vines. The stream which cuts Tegucigalpa in two ran directly below the hotel, splashing against the rocks and sweeping under the stone bridge with a ceaseless murmur. Beyond it stretched the red-tiled roofs, glowing pink in the moonlight, and beyond them the camp-fires of Alvarez twinkling like glow-worms against the dark background of the hills. The town had gone to sleep, and the hotel was as silent as a church. There was no sound except the whistle of a policeman calling the hour, the bark of the street-dogs in answer, and the voice of one of our sentries, arguing with some jovial gentleman who was abroad without a pass. After the fever and anxieties of the last few days the peace of the moment was sweet and grateful to me, and I sank deeper into the long wicker chair and sighed with content. The previous night I had spent on provost duty in the saddle, and it must have been that I dropped asleep, for when I next raised my head Miss Fiske was standing not twenty feet from me. She was leaning against one of the pillars, a cold and stately statue in the moonlight.