There came to be long silences between them as they rode, either boy or girl content to have it so, and neither the least bit lonesome. And they talked too, naturally, though this was not so significant. She would slyly provoke him. To her mind, there was never anyone quite so satisfying at a quarrel. She would pause in delighted expectancy to see his eyes grow big when she thrust, and then to see his mouth twitch at the corners as he caught her blade on his own keen wit. She had forgotten that he was rustic, except for the added zest it gave. Nor was there a false note in him, so happily and totally unconscious was he of self. And as for a certain gaucherie, that was the spice to his whole manner.

They talked of many things; rather, she made him talk. She learned that his name was John, as hers was Jeanne, and she wanted to know why the horse was Demijohn.

“Because, Miss Jack-leen,” he answered, “he’s my other half, and sometimes the better one, too.” He remembered that once, when he had drooped limp over the saddle, the buckskin had carried him out of the fighting to the rear. “You see,” he added, “we were both colts when our little shindy up there broke loose.”

“And you both went? Ah, Monsieur the Patriot, you did go, you did affront the tyrant? Yes!” She had the explorer’s eagerness. Perhaps she might discover in him her own especial demon of self-introspection.

“N-o,” he replied, “I reckon we went mostly for the fun of the thing.”

“N-o,” said the young Confederate, “we–we got licked.”

They talked–he rather–of Missouri. He was not reluctant to have stirred the memories of his home, not with one who could listen as she did. In his heart settled a warmth that was good, and the glow of it shone on his face. He became aware that the gray eyes were upon him, taking conscious note of his hair, his mouth, his chin, as though she were really seeing him for the first time. What made a girl do that way? He felt queerly, it being thus brought to him that he had awakened interest in a woman, but the tribute she paid him was ennobling, and a deep thankfulness, though to whom or for what he had not the least idea, made more kindly and good the cheery warmth around his heart. The gray eyes had never sparkled on him in coquetry as they sometimes did on other men, and now they were grave and sweet. It was a phase of Jacqueline that only her maid had known.

The marquise gathered that Missour-i, as she called it, was an exceedingly strange and fascinating region. She learned that it was a state, like a department in France, like her own Bourbonnais for instance. But there the comparison ended. The rest was all startling versatility. For the inhabitants had not only taken both sides during the Civil War, but through their governor had proclaimed themselves an independent republic into the bargain. They must be unusual citizens, those Missourians.

When on one occasion she went back to the coach, she found that Berthe also was enjoying the change to horseback. Jacqueline was glad of it. Now she could be alone, and she believed that she wanted to think. But she could not pin down what she wanted to think about; because, no doubt, there was so very much. Instead, she looked vacantly at the Storm Centre’s cartridge belt and pistols on the seat in front of her. They were grim, too, these playthings of a boy.

She lifted the belt. How heavy of metal it was! Idly, she thought she would count the leaden missiles. When finally she laid the belt aside, a bullet remained in her lap. It had fallen there out of its shell. Starting to fit the bullet in again, she suddenly dropped both bullet and cartridge. Her hands trembled. This particular shell contained no powder. But it contained a tightly rolled slip of oiled paper. The cartridge was a dummy, a wee strong box for some vital document.

It was not for scruples against looking that she paused. On the contrary, it was that she must look, absolutely, in sacred, patriotic duty bound, that finally decided–nay, compelled her to look. Still she hesitated before drawing out the paper. She dreaded what it might tell her. Concealed thus, and revealed only by a hazard, the paper held, she felt certain, the secret and the significance of the American’s errand to Mexico. And she did not want to know. She reviled bitterly the cruel chance that had thrust it on her.

Jacqueline put the letter back in the cartridge, and everything looked as before. But no genii, once out, can ever quite be bottled up again. That stray bullet had wounded her to the heart.

“As bad as fifty thousand!” she cried half aloud. “And they will become citizens, too–Mon Dieu, that is a nation!”

With them Maximilian would have a people behind him, and his throne would be as a rock. He could, and most certainly would, disdain the French army of occupation with its thirty thousand bayonets. The French might go back home. He would speed them cheerfully, and henceforth be Emperor in fact.

“But our treasure and our dead,” sighed Jacqueline bitterly, “we cannot take them back. No, nor our hopes, though they weigh little enough now, for that matter. Oh dear, and I am one of those hopes!–Help me Heaven, else I shall hate my own country. Oh, I must be true!–Now, why couldn’t those Missourians have sent–someone else?”

That evening she held a pen, but it would not move, not while her thoughts were upon it. So, by sheer will, she nerved herself not to think, and wrote mechanically. She wrote a message to Lopez, and another to Dupin, and yet a third. The third brought the tears long before it was finished. An Austrian took the first two, and rode all that night. She kept the other one herself.

All the next day Jacqueline kept to her coach. She was cross or nervously excited or melancholy, and by erratic turns in every mood that was hopelessly downcast, until her maid became well nigh frantic. At first Ney would hover near in helpless concern, but she ordered him away angrily. However, the storm broke at last when Driscoll reined in and waited at the roadside. She could see him through the little front pane of glass as the carriage drew nearer, and she watched with a fierce hunger in her eyes. All the time she stirred in greater agitation, and her breath came more and more quickly. At the very last moment, when a second later he might have seen her, she sprang to the window, looked once again, then in a fury snatched at the shade and jerked it down. Driscoll paused uncertain, but wheeled and galloped back to the head of the column. Berthe turned to her mistress. She was lying weakly against the cushions, staring at nothing and panting for air.

The Austrians were quartered in the village, and Ney and Driscoll found accommodations for the two girls and themselves farther down the road, at the house of a maguey grower whom they persuaded to vacate. While it was still light Driscoll amused himself strolling alone between the rows of the great century plants. Under their leaves, curving high above his head, he watched peons with gourds suck out the honey water from the onion-like bulbs into goatskin bags. After a time he wandered through the hacendado’s primitive distillery and on back to the house, with a feeling for supper.

As he entered, he heard the clanking of a sabre in the dark room. He thought nothing of it, but almost at once something cut through the air and a noose fell over him. He swung round, but the rope jerked tight about his knees, and he lurched and swayed as an oak before the axe. He struck with his fist and had a groan for reward, but a second lariat circled his shoulders and bound his arms to his body. As he went down under the weight of men, the shutters were thrown open, and he looked up into the red-lidded eyes of Colonel Lopez. A troop of cavalry was passing on the road outside, and he caught the sound of wheels departing.

“You hear?” said Lopez. “The marquesa is going to the City, having decided not to wait for you. But she leaves a note, pour prendre congé, eh? You will perhaps have time to read it before the shooting.”

Once more Driscoll found himself in an adobe with a sputtering candle for company. But he also had her note. It was the third of the messages which she had written the night before.

He jumped to his feet. “Oh–the pythoness!” he breathed fervently.

“––who betrayed you,” the letter read. “That you know this, monsieur, that your last thought shall be a curse at me, such will be my punishment. It is a self inflicted one, because you need not have known what I have done. The telling of this to you is my scourge, but it is not penitence. Worse and more unbearable is my sorrow that the penitence will never come, that I can feel no remorse, no more than if some inevitable thing, like the fever, had taken you. I would always do again what I have just done; as pitiless as I must be for you, Fate is for me. Your life, monsieur, is but added to the hundreds already snuffed out in this country for France’s sake. Those hundreds are my countrymen, and you, if you lived till to-morrow, would make their offering useless. I have tried to save you, monsieur, but you would not permit. You would not return to your own country, and–there was no other way. But do not think there will come emissaries in your place. Do not believe that I would so send you to death needlessly. There will be no emissaries after you. Your Confederates shall know that Maximilian’s court martial executed you, and is it that your compatriotes will then desire to help Maximilian? Believe–only believe, monsieur–that it is a cruel duty not permitting that I shall listen to my heart. If you but knew, if you but knew–and you shall know. Monsieur Driscoll–oh, mon chevalier, it is that I love you. There, know then, dear heart cheri, the enormity of my sacrifice. Know the necessity of it. Know that I envy you, for you are going, and I must stay, all alone, without you. Mon bien aimé, without you, through all my long life!”

She had signed it simply, “Jacqueline.”

“By God,” he cried, “I’m not going to be shot, no sir, not now, not after–not after this letter!”

Here was neither boy nor warrior. It was very much in the way of a lover.

The same evening, though two hours later, a public hack entered an outlying quarter of the City of Mexico called San Cosme, and drew up before a white mansion with beautiful gardens. A young girl with soft brown hair and gentle eyes got out, ran to the door, and brought down the ponderous knocker so terrifically that it abashed her, for all her present agitation. To the flunkey, who noted the public hack and was reproachful, she said, “I must see His Excellency. Here, I have written my name on Mademoiselle d’Aumerle’s card. I am her maid. Say to Monsieur le Maréchal that he will regret it, if I do not see him at once. Quick now, you!”

If possessed of guile, Berthe could not have done better. With Jacqueline’s card, used only because it had a blank side, her admittance was certain and immediate.

She passed the lackey into a luxurious apartment, Marshal Bazaine’s private cabinet. At one end there was a Japanese screen with a lamp behind, and at intervals came the sound of someone turning the leaves of a book. But Berthe thought solely of her errand. The marshal, thick necked, heavy cheeked and stocky, was standing, waiting for her.

“So,” he exclaimed, “milady is arrived, eh, and you bring me her commands?”

“No, Your Excellency, my mistress does not know that I am here. When she learns, she will dismiss me. I––”

“You will indeed regret, monsieur, if you do not let me speak. There’s a mistake to correct if–if it’s not too late.”

The chief of the Army of Occupation shrugged his shoulders until the back of his neck folded over itself. He had been correcting mistakes ever since Maximilian’s landing. But he was a child of the people himself, and the distress in her eyes made him patient. “Well, what is it?” he asked.

“It is an American. They will shoot him, monsieur!”

“Ah, one who interests the young person now before me, eh?”

“And I want you to stop them, monsieur! I want––”

“Child, child, whom am I to stop?”

“Colonel Lopez, monsieur. The American escaped once, but mademoiselle gave him up again. He’d saved mademoiselle’s life, too. And mine.”

The veteran soldier rubbed his finger tips on his bald, bullet-like head. “He saves her, and she gives him to Lopez. He must be an important species of American!”

“Yes, yes, monsieur.”

“There, don’t worry. His Majesty will pardon your friend to-morrow–if,” he added to himself, “only from habit.”

“But Lopez will shoot him before the Emperor knows.”

The marshal had shrewd eyes, and now they opened wide. “Getting more important, our American!” he grumbled uneasily. “Berthe, did your mistress know that Lopez would shoot him before he could be pardoned?”

“Oh yes, monsieur.”

“Because, because everybody seemed to think that the poor brave American had come with an offer of aid for Maximilian, and as you need more troops, I thought––”

“Who, in all mercy, is this American?”

“A Confederate officer, monsieur.”

Not one man, but two, paced the floor because of Jacqueline that evening. The second was the marshal of France, and he went at it now, on hearing of the first man. “A Confederate officer?” There were twin creases over his straight nose, furrows of vexed and intense thinking. The lone Southerner was linked intimately in his reflections with the parliament of a great nation. The people of France had never warmed to the Mexican dream, and the Chambers already were clamoring for the return of the troops. And now, for every Confederate enlisted, a pantalon rouge could be sent back home. But why–name of a name–should Jacqueline try to prevent?

“Did she,” he asked, but not very hopefully, “did she have any cause to dislike this American?”

“Never mind, what else did she say?”

“She said, ‘Oh, I hate thee, my country!’ but she wasn’t in her mind, oh no, monsieur. Then she grew very still, and that frightened me more yet. Once I even thought she was dead, and I put my arm about her. But her heart was beating, and her eyes were open, wide open and dry. I could see, for we were passing between the Paseo lights. I laid her head on my breast, and after a while I heard her lips move. ‘God bless him! God–Oh, I hope there is a God, just for this, to bless him, and keep him!’”

“H’m’m,” said the marshal, and went back and forth again, more perplexed than ever.

Berthe watched him anxiously, jealous of each moment lost. Once she started to speak, but his gesture for silence was such that she did not dare a second time. There was no other sound in the room except the tramp, tramp on the soft carpet. Even the occasional turning of a leaf behind the screen had ceased. Bazaine was groping cautiously in the mystery. A state reason, and no personal one, had compelled Jacqueline; that much was certain. Direct from the Tuileries, she was weighted under some grievous responsibility, and this night, back there at Tuxtla, she had been true to it. And whatever it was, it exacted imperatively that no Confederate aid should reach Maximilian. Such was Napoleon’s wish, however contradictory to official instructions. But the marshal was sufficiently a disciple of the little Napoleonic statecraft to beware of meddling. He fretted under methods whereby the whisper of the Sphinx reached him through private and unofficial agents, but it was a great deal to catch the Sphinx’s whisper at all. Besides, he owed his elevation to this enigma of Europe, and he meant to be loyal.

The little Bretonne looked, comprehended, and burst into tears. “My dear mistress!” she sobbed.

There was the sound of a book dropped on a table, and the screen was brushed aside.

“Perhaps,” came a softly ironical voice, “a woman might so much as veto our mighty Jacqueline. At any rate, suppose we try it, Don Pancho.”

Bazaine had forgotten his wife, his bride, who, to be near him, often retired behind the screen when he was busy with others. Hers was the loving ambition of a Lady Macbeth, in that a husband’s secret was never one for her.

“Step into this little room,” she said to Berthe, opening a door. “It will not take long,” she added, an assured light in her dark Spanish eyes.

“You will save him, madame? You––”

“Against all the marshals of France, child. Go, wait in there.”

The marshal of France present smiled on his bride indulgently, admiringly, as she closed the door and faced him.

She was less than half his age, the girl wife of a gray-haired veteran, and as his wife she was second lady of the land. A Mexican aristocrat, small and slender, of a subtle, winsome beauty, with the prettiest mouth and the most pyramidal of crinolines, she had reminded Bazaine of his first wife, and he had courted her. At the wedding Maximilian had stood padrino for the groom, and Charlotte madrina for the bride. The imperial gift to groom and bride was Buena Vista, as the white mansion and gardens in San Cosme were called. Naturally, then, Madame la Maréchale approved of Napoleon’s official instructions, which directed that Monsieur le Maréchal was to establish the Mexican empire solidly and for all time.

Bazaine wavered. Then he smiled. This Mexican bride of his was Mexican all the time; and French, sometimes not at all. She had not the big trust in the pantalons rouges when it came to those Yankees.

“But, Pancho mio,” she went on softly, “now for the real reason, the one that holds you back. It is your Emperor Napoleon, verdad? You think that he does not want this offer to reach Maximilian. Bien, have you had any intimation of what he wants? Any orders? Of course you haven’t. Then save this American. Look at me–Don Pancho, I say-if––”

“Sapristi, call the girl in! No, first I must have––”

When madame could free herself from what he must have, she opened the door and triumphantly called to Jacqueline’s maid.

“Berthe, you little addle-pated goose! You–oh you little ninny, you, you––” Her phrases were broken by laughter, then by an uncontrollable peal that was near a shriek, “Little, little fool, dost thou know, thou hast this night lost to France fifteen thousand leagues of empire? Thou–thou––” Yet kisses were again the portion of the thief of fifteen thousand leagues.

“But do you think they will be in time, Berthe? Yes, yes, you’ve answered that once. And Michel leads them, you say?”

“Oui, madame, Monsieur Ney was most eager to go, above all when His Excellency gave him Frenchmen to command. They are the cuirassiers. They will surely save the American monsieur.”

“But will they be in time? Yes, yes, I think I’ve asked that already.”

Her hysteric glee, changing to anxiety, now changed as quickly to something else. Her face went deathly white, the pretty jaws set hard, and there was the glint of resolution in the gray eyes. She seized a cloak and threw it about her.

“Come,” she said to the maid.

“Madame is going––”

“Yes, to undo your mischief. Bazaine must send to overtake Ney, must command him not to interfere with the execution. Bazaine will do this, when I see him.”

“But you will not find His Excellency to-night. Madame la Maréchale ordered the carriage for them both, as I was leaving there.”

“No, madame.”

“Of course not. Oh, she is cunning, your Madame la Maréchale!”

Alas for Jacqueline! She might conquer herself, but add to herself a second woman against her, and she was beaten. She confessed defeat by throwing off the cloak.

“Tuxtla is far, you think they will–will––”

“Oh I think they will, madame!”

“Say you know they will! Say it, Berthe, say it!”

“Oh, I hope so, madame. Monsieur the American is lucky.”

The American? Somehow the blood swept hotly into Jacqueline’s cheeks. “Say they will not save him, Berthe. Say no, no, no!” she commanded, and imperiously stamped her foot, but stamp as she would, her furious shame was there still, flaunting its glorious color. She was thinking of her letter, of her avowal to a doomed man. After that, any man was under obligations to get himself shot. Only, this one was of a contrary fibre.

In such an April mood, Jacqueline was capable of yet another caprice. “Berthe,” she cried, even as the whim came, “one is tired after playing the goose, n’est-ce pas? Do you, then, rest–yes, yes, while I comb your hair.”

“Madame!” Berthe protested with what breath astonishment left her.

“Do ye call me chief?” demanded the mistress. “Then, de grace, sit still! And why shouldn’t I, parbleu? If it took our big French Revolution to throw me up an ancestor out of the common kettle, there has just now been another revolution here”–she pressed a hand against her breast–“to stir me back among the people again. Do you know, dear, that your hair is beautiful!”

Of a sudden Jacqueline stopped, the braiding arrested by a most startling thought.

“Grands dieux,” she told herself slowly, for it had to be believed, however improbable, “until this very moment I’ve never once stopped to think of all the emotions I have been having this day. I’ve never once examined them, and such emotions–Oh, là, là, they’re a collection, a veritable museum of creeps! And here I’ve hurried through that museum, till I’ve even forgotten my umbrella at the check stand!”

The Storm Centre chafed under a mad desire to verify his name, which was not unusual. But it was the first time he had ever craved active danger as an antidote for his thoughts. The sound of bars lifting came as a relief, and he shook off the dark mood and was himself. Before the door opened, he thrust her letter into the candle flame. He had kept it till the last minute, but now he burned it, as she knew he would.

Instead of executioners, he beheld a tray, gripped by chocolate hands. Involuntarily he looked up to the face above the tray.

“Johnny the Baptist!” he exclaimed. “Well, well, how goes it itself to Your Mercy this evening?”

“Pues bien, señor,” returned the Baptist, grinning sheepishly. “Would, would Y’r Mercy like another bath?” The grimace was not unamiable. It betokened that this time he, and not the prisoner, might have a game to play.

“A thousand thanks,” replied Driscoll, “but I’ll try to make that other bath answer.”

“But señor, you wasted it.”

The Baptist drew nearer. “But suppose, señor,” he whispered, “suppose the need of absolution was again postponed, even now?”

Driscoll’s fork stopped half way to his mouth. There was no superstition in the affair this time. The once gullible Dragoon, moreover, was playing all the leads. “Of course,” Driscoll agreed heartily, “I’d certainly like it right well,” and he went on eating. But his wits were in a receptive state, alert for the meaning when it should come. The opening innuendoes exasperated him, for the guard was a clumsy agent. The man must needs feign a great dread of discovery, and tremble lest his colonel, Don Miguel Lopez, should find him out. As though supper, instead of a shooting squad, did not belie it all?

“Still your move, Johnny,” Driscoll had to remind him.

In the end it was to be gathered that Don Benito Juarez, the fugitive Señor Presidente of the fugitive Republic, might welcome an offer of Confederate aid, and ’twas a pity that the condemned señor should have no chance to escape. But if he did escape, he might find his way to the Señor Presidente far off in the state of Chihuahua.

So, the cards were dealt at last. Driscoll looked over his hand. He recognized a crooked game, a game of treachery and dark dealing; but even so he perceived that a trump or two had fallen to him, perhaps unwittingly, and he decided to “sit in for a spell.”

The man protested, and in some genuine alarm, that he had no employers.

“Oh all right,” said Driscoll easily, “then you’re bound to help me. Because if you don’t, I’ll sure tell Lopez what you’ve just been trying to hatch up here.”

The trap worked beautifully, for the guard tried hard to quake. But his fright was not spontaneous enough. Driscoll smiled. Now he knew the real player in the game.

“Cheer up, Johnny,” he spoke soothingly, “I’d not tell on you. But hadn’t you better go and think it over by yourself a little?”

The Baptist would hasten straight to Lopez, and Lopez, Driscoll foresaw, would interpret his scruples into a disguised acceptance. The crookedness of the game left the American no other trump, and he played it–against immediate death. Lopez, of course, would send him under guard to Juarez, but Driscoll thought he could trust that staunch old Roman, when once informed, to call for a new deck and an honest deal.

Juan Bautista “thought it over” outside, and directly returned with an answer. But when he again left Driscoll, he did not bar the door behind him. Within ten minutes thereafter Driscoll was creeping past a sleeping sentinel, on between rows of maguey, toward the road. Around him hovered five or six shadows. They were to be his escort and take him to Juarez. They would join him openly a safe distance away, at a place where their horses waited. But as he emerged upon the road, for the moment alone, a voice in French challenged sharply. “Halte-là!”

“Take them all, mes enfants,” a huge tone of command filled the darkness. It was Colonel Dupin. He had that moment arrived. Jacqueline’s message had reached him in the City not an hour before. The American had escaped, it said; he was at Tuxtla. The Tiger, knowing nothing of Lopez lying in wait for the same American at the same place, had dismounted his men, surrounded town and farms, and was closing in, when Driscoll himself fell among them.

The interview between Dupin and Lopez brewed stormy at first. The latter turned gray under his ruddy skin when Dupin walked in upon him in the front room of the farmhouse. But seeing that his own men were holding Driscoll, he nervously congratulated them upon the capture.

“How did he escape this second time?” demanded the Frenchman. “It seems to me, mon colonel, that the question would occur to you too.”

Lopez was sufficiently alive to his peril. He quickly sent two Dragoons to the temporary guard house to investigate. Dupin curtly ordered two Cossacks to accompany them. Soon they brought back the sentinel who had been conveniently asleep when Driscoll slipped past. The sentinel rubbed his eyes as he faced Lopez. So far everything had passed according to arrangement, and he looked for a severe mock examination. But the Tiger had been left out of the calculations, and the Tiger forthwith shouldered himself into the inquisition.

“Do you understand, Colonel Lopez, that your guard here was asleep? Si, señor, asleep! What now, mon colonel, is the little custom as to guards who sleep?”

“Si señor,” cried Lopez, “we don’t have to be taught, we Mexicans. We shoot them. Here, six of you, out with him! Quick, before he can whine!”

“Go with them,” added Dupin quietly to six of his Cossacks.

The sentinel was dragged out. His cries, whether for mercy or not, were smothered first by a sabre belt, and then for all time by musketry. The Cossacks returned and assured their chief that the execution was bona fide. This allayed Dupin’s suspicions.

“Permit me to suggest, Colonel Lopez,” he said courteously, “that you likewise honor our friend the American. I came from the City to do it myself, but it is a pleasure to give way before your superior vigilance.”

It had already occurred to Lopez that Driscoll also might talk. “You are very amiable, Señor Dupin,” he replied. “My court martial found him guilty, and as a matter of fact, he would have paid the penalty by now had Your Mercy not arrived. Between us, Colonel Dupin, he will hardly escape a third time.”

At his command six of the crack Dragoons stood forth. They were brown, and Mexicans. Lopez bowed to Dupin, who called forth as many Contras. The Contras were of variously hued races, but they were all the Tiger’s whelps. The file of Dragoons was jaunty crimson, the other corroded red. Driscoll fell in meekly between them.

“Sacred name of a dog, you are honored, señor!” Dupin exclaimed reprovingly. It angered him when a victim quailed. The present one ought to appreciate, too, that he was answering for two besides himself, for Murguía and Rodrigo, whose escape had wrenched the old warrior’s bowels.

There was one anxiety for the Storm Centre. If they should bind him! But they had not, he was so docile. And as they marched out the door, he exulted, and could hardly wait. Wouldn’t it be a lovely row, though! Just one good, last good time! He did not feel hard toward them, not when they had left off the ropes. He felt that he was to have value received, and all the while he figured out his desperate campaign.

“It was lovely,” he muttered under the heap.

They brought him back to the house, swathed in a mesh of lariats. Lopez awaited them, frothing oaths. Dupin was there too, and he looked an epicure’s satisfaction as they stood his victim against the wall. He did not regret the incident, since it had turned porridge into so choice a morsel.

“’Tis you, monsieur,” he confessed with rugged grace, “who have honored us.”

“Oh, your grandmother!” said Driscoll.

“Well, be patient. It will be all over in a minute more.”

The Tiger was, in fact, ordering the shooting squad, when through the open door glittering helmets and excited French and clanking sabres flooded the room. It was still another wondrous uniform for Driscoll, this of the cuirassiers, with so much of brass, and a queue of horse’s hair, and loose pantaloons that merged into gigantic black boots. In they strode, an agitated host of bristling moustaches, while outside was the restless sound of many hard breathed horses. The cuirassiers bore their wounded leader, and laid him on the iron bed in the room. But the man struggled to his feet. He called loudly for “Monsieur le Colonel,” and only by force, though gentle, could they hold him quiet.

“What is it?” responded both Dupin and Lopez.

“I, I mean the American Colonel. He–he––”

“Hello, Mike!” cried Driscoll.

He could not see for the others, nor move, but he recognized the voice of Michel Ney. He knew, too, that Michel must be the cavalry leader he had just shot. “Darn it, Mike!” he exclaimed, “I’m sorry! But weren’t there enough of ’em without you?”

He signed to Lopez, and Cossacks and Dragoons caught up the prisoner and started for the door.

“Wait!” Ney moaned feebly.

“Tonnerre, mon prince, your wound must be paid for, first. Hurry there, Messieurs les Imbeciles!”

“Wait!” Ney gasped. He half raised himself, but sank back with closing eyes. He made a gesture to his breast. All halted as in the presence of death.

“Help him, you there!” cried Driscoll. “Open his coat!”

The cuirassiers, eager, awkward nurses, fluttered round the bed, and tore away the sky-blue jacket, thinking to find the wound beneath. Instead, they drew out a paper. One of them read the address on it.

“Al Señor Coronel Don Miguel Lopez.”

Lopez broke the seal, frowned, and put the message in his pocket. “Nothing–oh, nothing important,” he volunteered. “Now, once for all, let us finish our work.”

“Wait!” a faint whisper came from the bed.

“He says to wait,” doggedly repeated a cuirassier.

“Yes, wait,” Driscoll pleaded suddenly. “Just a minute, before I go, before we both go, perhaps,”–he thought in a flash that it might be a last word from Jacqueline–“perhaps, gentlemen, he, he has something to tell me.”

But Ney’s head, moving weakly on the pillow, was a negative.

The prisoner’s voice grew firm again.

“Then hurry up!” he ordered in the old querulous drawl. “Don’t you know I’m in a hurry?”

Ney opened his eyes as he heard the shuffling of feet. Men were carrying out the prisoner. With feeble anger he brushed aside the hand of a cuirassier who was trying to staunch the blood at his groin.

“I–I––” His lips barely moved.

“We don’t know why we came,” stammered one, “and he can’t speak. But his signs are enough for us. It’s, it’s––”

“It’s something to do with the American,” declared a second cuirassier.

Dupin pounded back his half unsheathed blade. Brusquely he wheeled and faced the colonel of Dragoons. “Lopez,” he roared, “what was that message?”

“N-nothing, mi coronel, absolutely.”

“If it was from Maximilian, I’d know it to be a pardon, and not blame you. But I recognized the marshal’s seal, and that’s different.”

Lopez blanched, yet insisted again that the message was nothing. “Besides, señor,” he added, “I do not take orders from His Excellency, the marshal.”

“But I do,” thundered Dupin. “And I see them obeyed too. Oh, you can protest to your Emperor afterwards, my royal guardsman, if you want to, but a marshal of France is the law when I am near.”

Grunting contemptuously, Dupin turned to the bedside. The cuirassiers had gathered cobwebs from the rafters, and were dressing the wound. Michel tossed and groaned in the beginning of delirium. Dupin muttered with vexation, but he took hold of the lad’s wrist, and firmly closed his hand over it.

“Listen,” he said, very distinctly, putting into his tones every timbre of quiet, compelling will. “Listen, hear me!”

Slowly the feverish man grew still.

“Hear me,” said Dupin. “There are two questions–two, only two. You are to answer them.–You will shake your head, ‘Yes,’ or ‘No’–do you hear me?”

The Chasseur’s eyes opened wide, and they were calm.

Slowly, painfully, the head rocked on the pillow, from one side to the other.

“It’s ‘No’!” cried a score of men.

“Silence!” roared the Tiger. “Now, the second question: Does this order come from Marshal Bazaine?”

Michel’s chin sank to his breast. He groaned, he could not lift it again.

“Yes, thank––” Ney himself, his voice!

Dupin swung round. “Colonel Lopez,” he ordered savagely, “you will turn your prisoner over to Sergeant Ney, at once, sir! Open your mouth, you dog, and every Dragooning dandy of a Mexican among you––”

The Tiger’s pistols were drawn. His whelps looked hopeful. The cuirassiers bristled in sympathy.

Cracking his finger nails, fawning to the marrow, Lopez agreed.

“Unbind the prisoner,” ordered Dupin.

“Thank God!” came faintly from the bed.