“No, for my capital, for my palace! And father, allow no one to mention abdication to me again. My decision to stay is irrevocable.”

The padre promised faithfully that he should not be disturbed, and this was one promise that the good padre kept.

Early one morning a month later, a solemn little group of uniformed men climbed to the roof of Buena Vista, the imperial wedding gift to Marshal Bazaine, and nerving themselves, pulled down the Tricolor. France, a Napoleon, were again leaving the New World. It was Evacuation.

Cavalry, infantry, cannon, wagons, on they came through the city and past the Zócalo, under the Cathedral towers, under the lifeless, shuttered windows of the Palacio. Here in the Zócalo, in the central plaza, the sometime first lady of Her Imperial Majesty’s household sat in her barouche, and opposite her a pretty girl, and she was talking with an officer of Chasseurs d’Afrique whose horse was restive, and all the while there was the rumbling of wheels, the tread of feet, and the ring of hoofs.

The sometime first lady was saying good-bye to the officer, as she had already to many another gallant chevalier pausing beside her carriage. But for her it was farewell to all her countrymen there, to the little piou-pious most of all, and her gray eyes were frankly moist.

“And now they are going,” she mused aloud, “really going, because, parbleau, a monsieur in Washington says they must.”

“I wish to heaven,” swore the young officer gloomily, “some monsieur would say as much to you! See here, we’d give you and Mademoiselle Berthe enough room on the ship for a barracks, if you’d only come. There’s a many less welcome,” and he jerked his head toward a stream of vehicles straggling among the troops. They were filled with Mexican aristocrats whose doubtful titles had been revived by the Empire, all eagerly accepting French transport out of their native land.

“Mademoiselle–dear friend,” spoke the slow-thinking Michel, “you do not wish to answer my question. Why do you stay behind, alone? Why? Nothing good ever happens to anyone in this country, and who can tell what might happen to you when the army is gone? Come now,” he went on, forcing some bluff cheer into his words, “Jeanne d’Aumerle, your friends want you out of it. Fall in with us, here, now. Let me give the order, ’Cocher, à Paris!–Voilà, what more’s to be done?”

Indeed, what more simple? Or more to be desired? Yet there was nothing she desired less. She thought of what she had found in Mexico, and must leave behind. It was a dead thing, true, and already buried. But–the grave was too fresh as yet. However, the real reason for her staying involved something else.

She made no reply, for at the moment a strange voice, with a jagged Mexican accent and a thin insidious inflection, broke in upon them, and startled them all three.

“Nay, Monsieur le Duc,” it began, rolling the title as a morsel on the tongue. “Your Grace would deprive us of too much honor. Why, indeed, should mademoiselle not remain among us?”

But the pigmy was not altogether on parade. He had that morning been receiving arsenals and fortresses from the French; in short, the keys of the Empire. For he was Commander in Chief of the Imperial armies, was this species of manikin. And ugly? He was a man of lifted upper lip under a bristling moustache, a man of fangs, a wee, snarling, strutting, odious creature of a man. A deep livid scar split his cheek and would not heal. Instead of arousing sympathy, it proclaimed him rather for the scratches he gave to others. For he was that Mexican of infamous name, the Leopard. Once he had looted the British Legation. Another time he massacred young medical students attending the wounded of both sides. There were stories of children speared and tossed in ditches. Yet certain priests blessed his ardor as defender of the Church. Maximilian had sent him on a mission to Palestine, since he was abhorrent to the moderates. But now he was back again, to lead the clerical armies. The valley of Mexico shrank from his brutal proclamation demanding submission. “Mexicans, you know me!” so ended the snarl. He gathered forced loans. He drafted peons, though they were exempt. He emptied the prisons, and convicts he sent in chains as recruits for the Imperial garrisons. In such a fashion Leonardo Marquez began his duties as generalísimo of the Empire.

“Your Excellency is most kind,” said Jacqueline, for no other reason than to annoy him by changing from French into his own language.

“Make her tell you, then,” interposed the helpless Ney. He was utterly at sea. There was a trial of strength on between these two, but how or for what was quite beyond him.

Jacqueline pushed back the Persian shawl she wore–this fifth day of February was the Mexican springtime–and settled herself to the contest in earnest. “I fear,” she began slowly, “that my motive in staying can hardly be intelligible, unless, perhaps, Your Excellency knows why I came to Mexico in the first place. No señor, that blank smile of yours will not serve. Your Excellency cannot feign ignorance of public gossip.”

“Of course, I have heard that––”

“To be sure you have,” she returned dryly, “and you might add that I failed, since Maximilian has not yet abdicated. But Your Excellency is not one to imagine that the end can be long delayed.”

She, too, was searching for a motive, his motive in the interview.

“The Mexicans alone will sustain our patriotic ruler,” stoutly declared the generalísimo. “But let us suppose, merely for pastime, that His Majesty does abdicate. What then? What profit to France, since at this moment, before our eyes, her army is leaving?”

Jacqueline smoothed the ruffled pleats on her full gray skirt. They looked like an exaggerated railroad on a map, and doubtless needed smoothing.

“And remotely supposing,” she said, “that our army might come back again?”

Then, in a flash, she raised her eyes, and surprised the start he gave. But she laughed at once, and at him, for taking her nonsense as serious.

This, too, was nonsense, or so he was forced to consider it. But knowing that the Empire could not endure, he was believed even then to be negotiating with the rich former dictator. In his scowl Jacqueline discovered what she sought. He wanted, in brief, to negotiate with Napoleon also, and he wanted to negotiate through her. Napoleon could bid higher than Santa Anna. She saw, moreover, what was worrying the traitor. If Napoleon did not mean to bid, why then was she staying in Mexico?

Marquez glanced fretfully at Ney and Berthe. If he might be honored in the privilege of calling to pay his respects?––

But Jacqueline regretted that she was to be too much occupied in preparations for her own early departure. And that very evening she sent a note to Maximilian, frankly warning him against the Leopard. But she warned His Majesty farther, that if he did not heed, that when it should be too late to save him in any case, and Marquez still had something to sell, that then she would advise her own emperor, should her own emperor wish to buy. Hoping, though, for the best, she sent by Ney a message to Bazaine at the head of the column, suggesting that he delay embarkation as long as possible. She had in mind Maximilian awakened to the faithlessness of his chief support and wishing to overtake the French troops.

For which it appears that Jacqueline still wielded a free lance, belonging to her own country alone and owning no master other than her own conscience.

Finally he looked upon the last swinging foot, then at the dust settling. Below, in the Zócalo, what had been a fringe of mourning around the troops, became a scurrying of human creatures. They were his subjects. Not a French uniform remained, but the prince sighed heavily as he turned from his ignoble peep-hole. Courtiers and counselors glanced at each other significantly. By tacit consent one among them spoke.

“Free at last, sire, free at last! Ah, see them, there below. They know their shackles are broken, they know that the foreign invader who chilled their allegiance is gone. Nay more, their loyalty has already borne fruit. In the north, sire––”

“How, father? You do not mean––”

“Yes, sire, yes, the mother of God be praised! I mean victory, and death to many traitors. The news has just come. Miramon has won a decisive battle and taken Zacatecas.”

“Zacatecas! But Juarez was there?”

“Yes, sire, and Miramon entered so suddenly the arch rebel surely could not have escaped.”

“Juarez taken, that man taken!”

“Even so, sire, And”–Fischer’s interlaced fingers tightened until the veins grew large–“and, it only remains for Your Majesty to dispose of him, according to the law.”

Maximilian trembled with joy. He was master of the situation. His people had made him master. Here was divine right vindicated. It was–Destiny! He had but to follow whither the heavenly finger pointed. And in rapture, he seized his pen.

Bazaine and the French camped the first night, the next day, and yet another night outside the City, waiting. They did not reach Puebla until the tenth. The rear guard fell farther and farther behind, keeping the road open. At last there was news. Juarez had escaped Miramon at Zacatecas, warned in time through some mysterious agency. And farther, Miramon had encountered another Republican army, by whom he was not only defeated, but routed completely. In panic he was fleeing to Querétero.

“Maximilian must surely abdicate now,” thought Bazaine, and he sent back a message. “I can,” he wrote, “yet extend a hand to His Majesty to help him retire.”

In Vera Cruz the marshal waited for an answer. Day after day passed, and then the answer came. Too late, was its refrain. Maximilian had left his capital with what troops he could spare. He had left for Querétero, to join Miramon there.

Bazaine, the last to quit the shore, climbed aboard his ship, and taking one final look for a chance horseman with word to wait yet longer, and seeing none, gave the order to weigh anchor.

The mountain villages were arming. Bronzed men, savagely joyful, poured from under roofs of thatch, strapping on great black lead-weighted belts. In the corrals others lassoed horses. It looked like a sudden changing from peaceful highland domesticity, as the clans of Scotland or the cantons of Helvetia might gather. But these men were not rising to defend their homes. The hamlets clustered among the crags were their barracks, nothing more. The wildest cañons of the Sierra Madre del Sur, far away in the rocky southwestern corner of the continent, were only their camping grounds, their refuge. To be armed was their natural state. They were fighters by occupation. They were an army. Unceasing hardship and constant peril had seasoned them, and their discipline was perfect, unconscious, because it came from the herding instinct of wolves. During years they had waged war against a ruthless foe, and they, too, were relentless. The penalty of defeat was massacre.

The man as good as he was Régules. A Spaniard, Régules had fought with the Catholic Don Carlos. And now, he was suffering for Mexican Liberals the most that any general can suffer, defeat after defeat, and sometimes annihilation. But he was a Marion, a Fabius. He knew the mountain recesses as no one else, even better than Mendez, who was born among them, and here he would gather fugitives, draft every straggler, until in time he sallied forth again to badger his arch enemy. He hoped only to exist till that day when the French should leave Empire and Republic face to face, on equal terms. It had taken tenacious faith and gloomy years, but the day came at last. The news sifted through defile and gorge. The invader had embarked for Toulon. Nearer at hand Mendez had evacuated Morelia, and was marching to Querétero. And at Querétero was Miramon, driven there from the north by Escobedo. At Querétero was the Emperor–was the Empire, desperate, ferocious, an animal at bay. Out boldly upon the plain, then! But no longer as a slinking guerrilla horde! As an army rather, with thrilling bugles and the Mexican eagle aloft, and regiment numbers in gold on pennons of brightest red! For the Empire was the hunted mad-dog now, and the dignified host was the Republic. The barracks of the Sierra were arming.

In one of the corrals an officer of cavalry was quelling insubordination with soft words. But the mutineers, not knowing their man, did not fathom the dangerous sweetness of his tone. They were deserters from Mendez, come that morning, and as they had horses, were foisted on the officer’s splendid troop. But like the native infantry, they insisted that their women, the soldaderas, should go with them on what was to be a swift march to Querétero. Having brought useful information concerning Mendez, they were insolent in their demands.

“A Gringo to dictate to us, bless me the saints! Us, free Mexicans, and Republicans!” And the ringleader drew his machete and rushed on the officer.

The Gringo smiled, in a way that a man rarely smiles. His eyes opened in mild surprise, and as the mutineers looked to see his head roll from his shoulders, he was still smiling in that poisonously sweet way. Perhaps there passed across his face just the shadow of pity or of revulsion, but none might say for certain, because of a pistol’s flash that came so quickly after. With the report the assailant plunged headlong, and on the ground seemed to shrivel in his rags. Behind the smoke the officer was carelessly holding a large black revolver, no higher than his hip.

“Because,” he added, “it’s not a woman’s game.”

Then he thrust the weapon back under his ribs and sauntered away. The mutineers gaped in trembling at his back. When they picked up the ringleader, they saw that his fingers had been neatly clipped at the hilt of the machete.

The cavalry officer was Driscoll–but changed! He was changed as bland Mephisto would change a man, if the material were adaptable and Mephisto an artist. Such exquisite gentleness in peril and in slaying could be no other than the devil’s own, and in the most devilishly artistic mood of that suave dilettante.

More than a year before, when Driscoll changed sides, he was embarrassed to find a side to change to, so thoroughly had the Empire swept away all vestiges of the Liberal strength. But on achieving that farewell of his to Mendez, he rode happily southward, with some vague notion of tracking the Republic into Michoacan. The first night he slept under the stars mid tunas and Spanish daggers, and when he awoke it was to find a strange Indito squatting patiently at his feet. He sat up and rubbed his eyes at what might have been a Hindoo image, except that it doffed a straw sombrero.

“Y’r Mercy is awake?” queried the idol.

“N-o, but it will probably not be long now. Who in thunder are you?”

The Indito explained, and Driscoll covered his knees with his hands, and stared and grew more astounded. The ragged fellow said that he had escaped from Mendez’s camp by squirming on his belly through the cacti, and he had followed the American señor, on foot. He was, he added, a Republican spy.

Driscoll mechanically drew his pistol, but recalled that now he also was Republican.

“But why follow me?” he demanded.

“I was sent to watch only Y’r Mercy, Y’r Mercy’s thousand pardons.”

“And with Y’r Mercy’s permission, I was to kill Y’r Mercy at the first chance. But since Y’r Mercy has changed sides––”

“Now look here, who–who put you up to this business, I want to know?”

The man shrugged his shoulders. He only knew that a señor chaparro had sent him.

“A short señor?” Driscoll repeated. “Then we might call you a Shorter Yet, and maybe you know where this República is hiding out?”

The Indito brightened. “That’s why I’m here, señor. I’ll take Y’r Mercy to the Citizen General Régules.”

At the name Driscoll frowned involuntarily, but laughed as he again remembered that he no longer shared the Imperialist hates.

“Régules?” he repeated. “But we all thought he was dead, since the last time we scoured his mountains.”

“That the Virgin would have let me kill Y’r Mercy before then!” said the Indito regretfully. “But no matter, Y’r Mercy will discover that the citizen general is still alive.”

And so he was. They found him in the wildest of the wild region of the Sierra Madre del Sur, far away beyond the Rio de las Balsas, beyond Michoacan, in the impassable tierra caliente of the Pacific slope. The Indians here were the Pintos, who knew naught of the world outside, and owned allegiance to none but a grizzly old dictator, royally described as the Panther of the South. One thing was certain, the Empire could never follow Régules to the fever and ambush of the Panther’s marshy realm, and Régules was hard pressed indeed when he sought such protection. But he was there now, in that last refuge of Liberalism, alone, wounded, fever stricken, emaciated, but undaunted. Driscoll found him so, and became his first recruit.

The Republicans in Michoacan were cut off from all outside help, while those along the Rio Grande drew from the friendly Americans in Texas much aid and comfort. Driscoll pondered on this, until in June he got leave to go to the Córdova colony and there enlist, if possible, his old comrades of Shelby’s brigade. The result is known. After the affair at Tampico, he came back with a troop of colonels. They were the nucleus of a cavalry which he loved more than Demijohn, more than his ugly pistols, more than his pipe.

It was a grim affection that Driscoll bore his regiment of horse. He was no longer the same man as when he left. He returned from Córdova with a mood on him, which settled more and more heavily as he nursed his troops into a splendid fighting machine. There was a dangerously quiet exultation in the patience with which he built the regiment up to full strength and trained it into the power of a brigade. He did wonders through the idea, pleasantly instilled, that much of the fun of fighting lies in the winning, and he demolished, as an absurd fetich, the idea that the hunted men of Régules were doomed never to win.

The repeating rifles, it may be explained, formed a part of the cache which General Shelby had made on crossing into Mexico. He had taken them, among other things, from the Confederate depositories in Texas. Driscoll knew of the cache through Boone, and by infinite patience had it brought into Michoacan. A solitary Indito journeyed eight hundred miles unnoticed with some seeming fragments of scrap iron. Other vagos were in front of him. Others followed. And these passed yet others, empty handed, trudging in the opposite direction. So an arsenal came to the Sierra Madre del Sur all the way from the Rio Grande, and each and every cavalier, whether miserable ranchero or veteran Missourian, became an engine of destruction, good for a fusillade of forty shots without the biting of a cartridge, for sixteen from his rifle, for six from each of his revolvers, and after these, good for terrific in-fighting with his dragoon sabre. It was no marvel that Driscoll loved such a troop, but the wonder lay in his smile, soft and purring and far-away, as he stroked his murderous darling.

Daniel, however, overlooked the fact that a malady may break out variously, according to temperament. As an instance Daniel’s patient would lose himself in reverie, long and deep and mellowing. Now he was riding with a girl whose gray eyes were upon him in that pensive way she had; or rather, in the pensive way of a girl who finds herself in love, and wondering at it, seeks to learn the reason through a grave scrutiny of the object. It seemed very good to be riding with her again like that, for there was a soothing sense of companionship, of dear camaraderie that needed no words, but only that expression of her mouth and a pair of gray eyes. The day dream, while it lasted, had nothing of bitterness, but lulled his soul instead, and when it passed, he would be left with thankfulness for his moment of fleeting bliss and ineffable comfort. Or again, he awoke to reality with a longing that fiercely would not be denied. “Oh, I want–Jack’leen!” Often and often the imperious smothered cry all but passed his lips. And then he would shake himself, as out of physical slumber, and he would take up his life again. But he would be a shade deeper in the devil’s own mood, of gentleness and a smile.

After Cuernavaca Driscoll had brooded somewhat, yet rather as a boy whose melancholy is callow and easily fades. But during that evening in Boone’s cabin, he had changed to a man, for it was then he came to know the meaning of possession, and in the same moment he learned the meaning of loss. A dull and indefinable resentment thereafter grew on him. But against whom? Against no one, perhaps. Yet he had had a vision of his life’s dearest happiness, and it was gone, that vision, beyond recall.

It was a long column that undulated over the cacti plain with the turnings of the national highway. Men and horses bent like whitened spectres under a cloud of saltpetre dust. They burned with thirst, and had burned during fifteen days of forced marching over bad roads. They kept their ranks after the manner of soldiers, else they would have seemed a hurrying mob, for there was scant boast of uniforms. The officers wore shoulder straps of green or yellow, and some of the men had old military caps, high and black, with manta flaps protecting the neck.

Their mouths opened wide to the salty dust, and they roared with great-lunged humor, the stentor note of Tall Mose Bledsoe–Colonel Bledsoe of the State of Pike–far and away in the van of the chorus. Even the Mexicans, who comprised over half the regiment, chanted forth the tune. They had heard it often enough, and thought it a species of appropriate national hymn. Only the colonel of the troop rode in silence, but not gloomily. This playfulness of his pet before a snarl was music that he liked. The other Missouri colonels (brevet) were as boys ever, were still only Joe Shelby’s “young men for war.” There was Colonel Marmaduke of Platte. There was Colonel Crittenden of Nodaway. There was Colonel Grinders from the Ozarks. There was Colonel Clay of Carroll, and Colonel Carroll of Clay. These were captains. Colonel Bledsoe was a major, and so was Colonel Boone, also chief of scouts. Colonel Clayburn, otherwise the “Doc” of Benton, was ranking surgeon; while the chaplain, lovingly known as “Old Brothers and Sisters,” and the choicest fighter among them, was lieutenant-colonel.

Driscoll’s troop wanted for nothing. Regimentals, luckily, were not considered a want. But in replacing worn-out slouch hats and cape-coats, the Americans set an approximate standard, which was observed also by their fellow troopers among the Mexicans. They were able to procure sombreros, wide-brimmed and high-peaked, of mouse-colored beaver with a rope of silver. The officers and many of the men had long Spanish capas, or cloaks, which were black and faced in gray velvet. Their coats were short charro jackets. As armor against cacti, they either had “chaps” or trousers “foxed” over in leather, with sometimes a Wild Western fringe. They came to be known as the Gray Troop, or the Gringo Grays. The natives themselves were proudest of the latter title.

But at Celaya, when men were thinking of rest in the cool monasteries there, they learned that they must not pause. The word came from El Chaparrito, who ever watched the Empire as a hawk poised in mid-air. General Escobedo of the Army of the North had pursued Miramon south into Querétero, but only to find him reinforced there by Mendez and the troops from the capital. This superior array meant to attack Escobedo, then turn and destroy Corona and Régules. The Republicans, therefore, must be united at once.

The message was no sooner heard than the two weary brigades of Corona and Régules set forth again. They covered the remaining thirty miles that night, expecting a victorious Imperialist army at each bend in the road. But they met instead, toward morning, a lone Imperialist horseman galloping toward them. Régules’s sharp eyes caught the glint of the stranger’s white gold-bordered sombrero, and with a large Castilian oath he plucked out his revolver. Driscoll touched his arm soothingly.

“But, María purísima,” cried Régules, “he’s an Explorador!”

The Exploradores were Mendez’s scouts, his bloodhounds for a Republican trail, and the most hated of all that breed.

“Aye, Señor General,” the stranger now spoke, “I was even the capitan of Exploradores, who kisses Your Mercy’s hand.”

There was a familiar quality in the man’s half chuckle, and Driscoll hastily struck a match. In its light a face grew before him, and a pair of malevolent eyes, one of them crossed and beaming recognition, met his.

“Well, Tibby?” said Driscoll quietly.

“First your pistols, then what you know,” commanded Régules. “Here, in between us. Talk as we ride, or––”

Don Tiburcio complied. Such had been his intention.

“Nor a live deserter for long,” said Régules. “Quick, what’s the news at Querétero?”

“Carrai, my news and more will jolt out if I open my mouth. Eh, mi coronel,” he added to Driscoll, “you’ve taught this barbarous gait to the Republic too, I see?”

“Better obey orders,” Driscoll warned him gently.

“But there’s no need of hurry, señores. Not now, there isn’t.”

“You mean the Imperialists have whipped Escobedo, that––”

“Not so fast, mi general. If they had, wouldn’t I want you to hurry, for then there’d be a conquering Empire waiting for you?”

“Colonel Driscoll,” said Régules, “fall back a step. I’m going to kill this fellow now.”

“As you wish, general. But he’s got something to tell.”

“Then por Dios, why doesn’t he?”

“Yes, Tibby, why don’t you?”

Don Tiburcio cocked a puzzled head toward the American. He had not known such softness of voice in Mendez’s former captain of Lancers. But he saw that Driscoll had drawn his pistol, which accorded so grimly with the mildness of his tone that the scout chuckled in delight and admiration.

“You know that I’ll tell–now,” he said reproachfully. “In a word, there’s been no battle at all, curse him, curse both––”

“No battle! Escobedo kept away then?”

“No, not even that. The Imperialists would not fight, and the Empire has lost its last chance. Curse them both, curse––”

“Well, curse away, but who, what?”

“Good, that’s finished. Now tell us why there was no battle.”

“I curse His Ex––”

“You have already, but now––”

Tiburcio flung up his hand in a gesture of assent, and his ugly features relaxed. Though going at a brisk trot, he rolled a cigarette and lighted it. Then he told his story. Querétero? Ha, Querétero was now the Court, the Army, the Empire! Pious townsmen shouted “Viva el Señor Emperador!” all day long. The cafés were alive with uniforms and oaths and high play. Padres and friars shrived with ardor. There was the theatre. Fashion promenaded under the beautiful Alameda trees, and whispered the latest rumors of the Empress Carlota. Maximilian decorated the brave, and bestowed gold fringed standards. Then came Escobedo and his Legion del Norte, but they kept behind the hills. Bueno, the Empire would go forth and smite them, and the pious townspeople climbed to the housetops to see it done. And yesterday morning the Empire, with banners flying and clarion blasts, did march out and form in glittering battle array.

“And then, hombre?”

“And then the Empire marched back again, señores.”

Régules and Driscoll were stupefied. What gross idiocy–or treachery–had thrown away the Empire’s one magnificent chance?

Tiburcio sucked in his breath. “I curse––”

“Marquez?” cried Régules.

“Si señor, Marquez! Marquez cried out against the attack, and His Majesty ordered the troops back into town again.”

“General Miramon fairly begged to fight, but he has been defeated once, and now Marquez warns the Emperor against Miramon’s ‘imprudence.’ Marquez is chief of staff, and crows over Miramon, who was once his president. He personally ordered Miramon off the field, yet it was Miramon who first made the insolent little whelp into a general.”

“This,” said Driscoll, “does not explain why you desert to us?”

For an instant the old malignant humor gleamed in the baleful crescent. “It’s the fault of the fat padrecito,” he replied. “Your Mercy perhaps does not know about the pretty servant he eloped with from the Bishop of Durango’s to Murguía’s hacienda? Well, but trouble started when I saw her, or rather, when she saw me, even me, señor, for then she perceived that the padrecito was not a handsome man. Presto, there was another eloping, and the holy Father Fischer felt bad, so very bad that when he got into favor with Maximilian, he had me condemned for certain toll-taking matters he knew of. But I vanished in time, and I’ve been serving under Mendez as a loyal and undiscouraged Imperialist until yesterday. But yesterday the padre recognized me at a review of the troops. Your Mercy figures to himself how long I waited after that? Your Mercy observed how fast I was riding?”

The fellow’s audacity saved him. The news he brought proved correct. Escobedo had not been attacked. Besides, Régules perhaps hoped to trap Mendez through the former Imperialist scout, though Driscoll derided the idea and even counseled the worthy deserter’s execution.

“Now sing us the national hymn,” said Driscoll, “and the betrayal of your former friends will be complete.”

But though Don Tiburcio had deserted for convenience and perhaps meant to be a spy in the dissident camp, yet Régules saved him, while Driscoll lifted his shoulders indifferently and at heart was not sorry.

But however excellently Querétero served as a base of military operations, as a besieged place pocketed among hills her aspect altered woefully. She was like an egg clutched in the talons of an eagle. On north and east and south the hills swept perilously near, a low, convenient range, with only a grass plain a few miles wide separating them from the town below. On north and east the heights were already sprinkled with Escobedo’s tents and cannon. They commanded the only two strongholds of the besieged, as well as the town itself, which lay between. One stronghold was the Cerro de las Campanas, a wedge-shaped hill on the northwestern edge of the town, which held nothing but trenches. On the northwestern edge was the other stronghold, the mound of Sangremal, which fell away as a steep bluff to the grassy plain below. From the bluff, across the plain, to the hills opposite, stretched a magnificent aqueduct. On the mound’s commodious summit of tableland there was the Plaza de la Cruz, also the Church de la Cruz, and an old Franciscan hive, called the monastery de la Cruz. Here Maximilian established himself in a friar’s lonely cell. On the north a small river skirted the town, on the south, where nothing intervened between the grassy plain and the wooded Alameda, the besiegers found the most vulnerable flank.

“Marquez will escape! Marquez will fly the net!” he kept bewailing. “Si señor, and the padrecito with him, curse them both!”

Two weeks passed, filled with skirmishes and ominous tests of strength. At night fiery parabolas blazed their course against the sky, up from the outer hills, sweeping down on Las Campanas or La Cruz. Imperialist chiefs urged a general attack, but again Marquez foiled their hopes. Then, at two o’clock one morning, there came to pass what Tiburcio had feared. A body of horse stole out upon the plain, and gained the unguarded Sierra road to Mexico. Four thousand cavalry pursued over the hills, but in vain. The fugitives were Marquez and the Fifth Lancers, his escort. He was gone to the capital to raise funds, and to bring back with him, at once, the Imperialist garrison there of five thousand men. Doting Maximilian had even named him lieutenant of the Empire, and Mexico City would shortly have the Leopard for regent. Querétero, moreover, was seriously weakened by the loss of the Fifth Lancers, and there were those who remembered how, when Guadalajara was besieged by Liberals seven years before, Marquez had likewise set out for aid, and had returned–too late.

To his wrathful disgust, Don Tiburcio learned that Father Fischer was also gone with Marquez. The priest had disguised himself in an officer’s cloak, and for the moment none in the town knew of his flight. The fat padre, it appeared, no longer hoped for the luscious bishopric of Durango. His was the rat’s instinct, as regards a sinking ship.