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The Dust of Conflict

by Harold Bindloss · English · Gutenberg #35834 · 671,337 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Dust of Conflict

Author: Harold Bindloss

Illustrator: W. Herbert Dunton


        
Release date: April 12, 2011 [eBook #35834]
                Most recently updated: September 19, 2011

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DUST OF CONFLICT ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net









THE DUST OF CONFLICT


[Illustration: "I AM, YOU WILL REMEMBER, AN ADVENTURER."]


THE DUST OF CONFLICT

By HAROLD BINDLOSS

AUTHOR OF "ALTON OF SOMASCO,"
"THE CATTLE-BARON'S DAUGHTER," ETC.

With illustrations in color by
W. HERBERT DUNTON

NEW YORK - FREDERICK A.
STOKES COMPANY - PUBLISHERS


Copyright, 1907,
BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

Published in January, 1907

All rights reserved

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.




CONTENTS


  -- I -- VIOLET WAYNE'S CONFIDENCE

  -- II -- DAVIDSON MEETS HIS MATCH

  -- III -- TONY CANNOT DECIDE

  -- IV -- THE VERDICT

  -- V -- APPLEBY MAKES A FRIEND

  -- VI -- THE SCHOONER "VENTURA"

  -- VII -- THE DESCENT OF SANTA MARTA

  -- VIII -- APPLEBY'S PRISONER

  -- IX -- THE BREAKING OF THE NET

  -- X -- AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

  -- XI -- THE ALCALDE'S BALL

  -- XII -- PANCHO'S WARNING

  -- XIII -- THE SECOND ATTEMPT

  -- XIV -- APPLEBY PROVES OBDURATE

  -- XV -- TONY'S LAST OPPORTUNITY

  -- XVI -- DANE COP

  -- XVII -- TONY IS PAINFULLY ASTONISHED

  -- XVIII -- NETTIE ASKS A QUESTION

  -- XIX -- POSITIVE PROOF

  -- XX -- FOUND GUILTY

  -- XXI -- TONY'S DECISION

  -- XXII -- MORALES MAKES A PROPOSAL

  -- XXIII -- APPLEBY TAKES A RISK

  -- XXIV -- RESPITED

  -- XXV -- MORALES SITS STILL

  -- XXVI -- THE SEIZING OF SAN CRISTOVAL

  -- XXVII -- HARDING'S APPROBATION

  -- XXVIII -- TONY MAKES AMENDS

  -- XXIX -- TONY PERSISTS

  -- XXX -- MORALES PRESERVES HIS FAME

  -- XXXI -- STRUCK OFF THE ROLL

  -- XXXII -- APPLEBY LEAVES SANTA MARTA

  -- XXXIII -- VIOLET REGAINS HER LIBERTY

  -- XXXIV -- THE RIGHT MAN


THE DUST OF CONFLICT




I -- VIOLET WAYNE'S CONFIDENCE


THE November afternoon was drawing towards its close when Bernard
Appleby stood with a gun on his shoulder in an English country lane. It
was a costly hammerless gun, but it had been lent to him, and the fact
that his right shoulder was sore and there was a raw place on one of his
fingers was not without its significance. Appleby, indeed, seldom
enjoyed an opportunity of shooting pheasants, and had been stationed at
what proved to be a particularly warm corner of the big beech wood. Here
he had, however, acquitted himself considerably better than might have
been expected, for he had a steady eye and the faculty of making a quick
and usually accurate decision, as well as a curious coolness in action,
which was otherwise somewhat at variance with an impulsive disposition.
These qualities are useful in more serious affairs than game shooting,
and it was fortunate for Appleby, who was a poor man, that he possessed
them, because they comprised his whole worldly advantages.

A little farther up the lane his kinsman, Anthony Palliser, was talking
to a keeper, and though Appleby could not hear what they said, there was
something in the man's manner which puzzled him. It was certainly not
respectful, and Appleby could almost have fancied that he was
threatening his companion. This, however, appeared improbable, for
Anthony Palliser was a man of some little importance in that part of the
country, and endowed with an indolent good humor which had gained him
the good will of everybody. Still, Appleby had seen that complaisance
can be carried too far, and knowing rather better than most people how
little stiffness there was in Palliser's character, watched him somewhat
curiously until the keeper moved away.

Then Palliser came up and joined him, and they turned homewards down the
lane. They were not unlike in appearance, and of much the same age--
Appleby twenty-six, Palliser a year younger. Both were healthy young
Englishmen, but there was an indefinite something in the poise of
Appleby's head, and the very way he put his feet down, which suggested
who possessed the most character. He had clear blue eyes which met one
fearlessly, and into which there crept at times a little reckless
twinkle, crisp brown hair, and lips which could set firmly together,
while he held himself well, considering that he labored for the most
part at a desk.

"What do you think of keeper Davidson?" asked Palliser.

"A surly brute!" said Appleby. "Ill-conditioned, but tenacious. Have you
any reason for asking?"

He fancied for a moment that Palliser had something to tell him, but the
younger man smiled somewhat mirthlessly. "I don't like the fellow, and
wonder why my respected uncle tolerates him," he said. "He is certainly
tenacious. You have a trick of weighing up folks correctly, Bernard."

"It is fortunate I have some qualification for my profession, and it's
about the only one," said Appleby dryly. "Still, it did not need much
penetration to see that you and he held different opinions."

Palliser appeared irresolute. "The fact is, he would have the netting
put up in the wrong place, and spoiled what should have been our best
drive," he said. "It was by his bad management they had to put two of
the game hampers in the dog-cart, which sent us home on foot. I hope you
don't mind that. It's a pleasant evening for walking, and you know you
don't get much exercise."

"Not in the least!" said Appleby. "Don't make excuses, Tony. It isn't
everybody who would have walked home with me, and it was very good of
you to persuade Godfrey Palliser to have me down at all. It is the only
taste I get of this kind of thing--one fortnight in the year, you see--and
I'm considerably fonder of it than is good for me."

Palliser flushed a trifle, for he was sympathetic and somewhat
sensitive, though his comrade had intended to express no bitterness. By
and by he stopped where the lane wound over the crest of a hill, and it
was possible that each guessed the other's thoughts as they looked down
into the valley.

A beech wood with silver firs in it rolled down the face of the hill,
and the maze of leafless twigs and dusky spires cut sharp against the
soft blueness of the evening sky, though warm hues of russet and crimson
still chequered the dusky green below. Beyond it, belts of thin white
mist streaked the brown plough land in the hollow where Appleby could
see the pale shining of a winding river. Across that in turn, meadow and
coppice rolled away past the white walls of a village bowered in
orchards, and faded into the creeping night beyond a dim church tower
and the dusky outline of Northrop Hall. As they watched, its long row of
windows twinkled into brilliancy, and the sound of running water came up
with the faint astringent smell of withered leaves out of the hollow.
Appleby drew in a deep breath, and his face grew a trifle grim.

"And all that will be yours some day, Tony!" he said. "You ought to feel
yourself a lucky man."

Palliser did not appear enthusiastic. "There are," he said, "always
drawbacks, and when there are none one generally makes them. The place
is over head and heels in debt, and setting anything straight,
especially if it entailed retrenchment, was never a favorite occupation
of mine. Besides, a good deal depends upon my pleasing Godfrey Palliser,
and there are times when it's a trifle difficult to get on with him."

"Still, your wife will have plenty of money."

Appleby almost fancied that Palliser winced as they turned away. "Yes,"
he said. "Violet and I are, however, not married yet, and we'll talk of
something else. Are you liking the business any better?"

Appleby laughed. "I never liked it in the least, but Godfrey Palliser
gave me my education, which was rather more than anybody could have
expected of him, and I had the sense to see that if I was ever able to
practise for myself the business he could influence would be a good
thing for me. My worthy employer, however, evidently intends holding on
forever, and the sordid, monotonous drudgery has been getting
insupportable lately. You may be able to understand that, though you
haven't spent six years in a country solicitor's office."

"No," said Palliser sympathetically. "I never go into such places except
when I want money, as I frequently do. Still, is there anything else
open to you?"

Appleby straightened his shoulders with a little resolute gesture, and--
for they were heading west--pointed vaguely towards the pale evening
star.

"There are still lands out there where they want men who can ride and
shoot, and take their chances as they come; while if I was born to be
anything in particular it was either a jockey or a soldier."

Palliser nodded. "Yes," he said, "you got it from both sides, and it was
rather a grim joke to make you a solicitor. Still, it's a risky thing to
throw one's living over, and I have a fancy that my uncle likes you. You
are a connection, anyway, and one never knows what may happen."

"Godfrey Palliser has done all he means to do for me, and even if there
were nobody else, your children would have a prior claim, Tony."

Palliser looked up sharply, and though the light was very dim there was
something in his face that once more puzzled his companion. "I think
that is a little personal--and I wouldn't make too sure," he said.

They said nothing further, but tramped on in the growing darkness, past
farm steadings where the sleek cattle flocked about the byres, into the
little village where the smell of wood smoke was in the frosty air,
through the silent churchyard where generations of the Pallisers lay,
and up the beech avenue that led to Northrop Hall. It would, as Appleby
had said, all be his comrade's some day. They parted at the head of the
great stairway where the long corridors branched off, and Appleby looked
at Palliser steadily as he said--

"One could fancy there was something on your mind tonight, Tony."

Palliser did not answer, and Appleby went to his room to dress for
dinner, which was a somewhat unusual proceeding for him. Nothing of
moment occurred during the meal, and it was nobody's fault that he felt
not quite at home, as he had done at other functions of the kind. The
gayeties of the Metropolis were unknown, except by hearsay, to him, and
it was but once a year he met Tony's friends at Northrop Hall. It was,
however, not quite by coincidence, as he at first fancied, that he
afterwards found Miss Violet Wayne, Tony's fiancee, sitting a little
apart from the rest in the drawing-room. He did not think that either of
them suggested it, but presently she was walking by his side in the
conservatory, and when they passed a seat almost hidden under the fronds
of a tree fern she sat down in it. The place was dimly lighted, but they
could see each other, and Appleby had realized already that Violet Wayne
was distinctly good to look upon.

Her face was almost severely regular in outline and feature, with but
the faintest warmth in its creamy tinting; but this was atoned for by
the rich coloring of her hair, which gleamed with the hues of gold and
burnished copper. There was also a curious reposefulness about her, and
Appleby had wondered why a young woman of her distinction had displayed
the kindliness she had more than once done to him. He was grateful for
it, but what he had seen of men and women during his legal training had
made him shrewd.

"This place is pleasantly cool and green, but I am not sure that is why
we are here," he said. "In any case, I am glad, because I am going away
to-morrow, and wished to thank you for your graciousness to me. I am,
as, of course, you know, an outsider here, and you have in several
tactful ways made my stay pleasant to me."

Violet Wayne looked at him with big calm eyes, but made no disclaimer.
"You are a relative of Godfrey Palliser!"

"A distant one; but my mother married a penniless army captain, and a
ranker. He had won his commission by worth and valor, but that was no
reason why the Pallisers should hold out a hand to him."

Violet Wayne nodded gravely. "Still, Godfrey Palliser sent you to school
with Tony. You were always good friends, though I think he told me you
were born abroad?"

"Yes," said Appleby, "he was my first English friend. My father died at
Gibraltar, and my mother stayed on there until she followed him. She did
not want to forget him, and living is cheap in Spain. Tony and I fought
our way through three schools together."

"I think it was you who fought for him," said Miss Wayne, with a little
smile. "He has, I may mention, told me a good deal about you, and that
is one reason why I feel that I could trust you. You would, I believe,
respect any confidence a woman reposed in you."

Appleby flushed a trifle. "I fancy I told you I was grateful," he said.
"The little kindnesses you have shown me mean so much to a man whose
life is what mine has been. One gets very few of them, you see."

"Still," the girl said quietly, "when we first met you were not quite
sure of me."

The color showed a trifle plainer in Appleby's forehead, for he had not
had the advantages of his companion's training, but he looked at her
with steady eyes. "You can set that down as due to the pride of the
class I sprang from on one side--I feared a rebuff which would have hurt
me. I was, you will remember, Tony's friend long before he met you!"

"And now?"

Appleby made her a little inclination. "Tony," he said, "is a very good
fellow, as men go, but I do not know that he is good enough for you."

Violet Wayne smiled and then sat still, looking at him with a curious
softness in her eyes. "He is in trouble," she said simply, "and I am
fond of him. That is why I have led you on."

Appleby rose, and there was a suggestion of resolute alertness in his
attitude, though his head was bent. "Don't ask me for any help that I
can give. Let me offer it," he said. "I don't know that I am expressing
myself fittingly, but it is not only because you will be Tony's wife
that you can command whatever little I can do."

The girl saw his lips set and the glint in his eyes, and knew he meant
what he said. She also saw his chivalrous respect for herself, and,
being a young woman of keen perceptions, also surmised that the son of
the ranker possessed certain qualities which were lacking in the man she
was to marry. She was, as she had admitted, fond of Tony, but most of
those who knew and liked him guessed that he was unstable and weak as
water. Violet Wayne had, however, in spite of occasional misgivings, not
quite realized that fact yet.

"I want you to help him because you are his friend--and mine, but it
would hurt him if you told him that I had asked you to; and I do not
even know what the trouble is," she said.

"I have pledged myself; but if you have failed to discover it how can I
expect to succeed?"

Violet Wayne did not look at him this time. "There are some difficulties
a man would rather tell his comrade than the woman who is to be his
wife."

"I think, if I understand you aright, that you are completely and wholly
mistaken. If Tony is in any difficulty, it will be his usual one, the
want of money."

A tinge of color crept into the girl's face. "Then you will lend it him
and come to me. I have plenty."

She rose as she spoke, and Appleby long afterwards remembered the
picture she made as she stood amidst the tall ferns with the faint
warmth in her face and the vague anxiety in her eyes. She was tall, and
held herself well, and once more he bent his head a trifle.

"I will do what I can," he said simply.

Violet Wayne left him, but she had seen his face, and felt that whatever
it cost him the man would redeem his pledge; while Appleby, who went
outside to smoke, paced thoughtfully up and down the terrace.

"If Tony has gone off the line in the usual direction he deserves to be
shot," he said.

He went in by and by, and watched his comrade in the billiard room. Tony
was good at most games, but that night he bungled over some of the
simplest cannons, though Appleby remembered that he had shot remarkably
well during the afternoon. Still, he expected no opportunity of speaking
to him alone until the morning, and when the rest took up their candles
retired to his room. He lay in a big chair thinking, when Tony came in
and flung himself into another. Appleby noticed that his face was almost
haggard.

"Can you lend me ten pounds?" he said.

"No," said Appleby dryly. "I had to venture an odd stake now and then,
and do not play billiards well, while I am now in possession of about
three sovereigns over my railway fare home to-morrow. What do you want
the money for?"

"I only want it until the bank at Darsley opens to-morrow. This is my
uncle's house, of course, but I am, so to speak, running it for him, and
I couldn't well go round borrowing from the men I asked to stay with
me."

"It seems to me that you have not answered my question."

Tony showed more than a trace of embarrassment. He was, though a
personable man, somewhat youthful in appearance and manner, and a little
color crept into his forehead. Appleby, who remembered his promise, saw
his discomposure, and decided that as the bank would be open at ten on
the morrow Tony wanted the money urgently that night.

"Is there any reason why I should?" said the latter.

Appleby nodded. "I think there is," he said. "We have been friends a
long while, and it seems to me quite reasonable that I should want to
help you. You are in a hole, Tony."

Palliser had not meant to make a confession, but he was afraid and weak,
and Appleby was strong. "I am. It's a devilishly deep one, and I can't
get out," he said. "Well, I'll tell you. I'm in that condemned Davidson
the keeper's hands, and he is squeezing the life out of me. You will
remember his daughter Lucy, who lived at the lodge?"

"Blackmail!" said Appleby dryly. "Go on."

Tony took out and played with a cigar. "She was pretty, and you know I
was always a trifle soft. Now and then I stopped as I passed, and talked
to her. I don't think she disliked it. Well, I don't remember exactly
how it came about, but I made her a trifling wager, and, of course, I
lost it; while some fiend put it into my head to send her a little
brooch, with a note, instead of the forfeit agreed on--I think it was a
box of chocolate. I was away for a week or two, and when I came back she
told me she didn't think she ought to take anything of that kind from
me. There was nobody about the lodge--at least so I fancied--and I
insisted upon putting the condemned thing on. I think I told you she was
pretty."

"I have seen it for myself," said Appleby, whose face was a picture of
disgust. "Go on!"

"Well," said Tony, "why the devil are you looking like that at me? I
wasn't engaged to Violet then, and I kissed her--and went away
immediately. It is necessary that you should know this, you see."

Perhaps it was relief, for his comrade was more truthful than weak men
usually are, but Appleby lapsed into a great burst of laughter. Tony,
however, looked at him lugubriously.

"It really isn't in the least amusing--to me," he said. "It's an
especially risky business kissing that kind of young woman, especially
when anybody sees you. Still, I'd seen something in the girl's face that
warned me, and on my word of honor the affair ended there; but in a week
or two, when I didn't answer the note she sent, Davidson came and
worried me. Talked about his feelings and a motherless girl's
reputation, showed me the note I'd written her, and said a good deal
about witnesses. Well--you know I'm careless--I gave him five pounds, a
note, and then saw he had one of his men hanging about. 'Go down to the
"Black Bull," and get this fiver Mr. Palliser has given me changed,' he
said."

"Clever!" said Appleby. "I begin to understand the thing."

"Well," said Tony, "I never went near his place since then, and the girl
went away, but soon after I was engaged to Violet, Davidson turned up
again. This time it was a more serious tale--the usual one--but you have
got to believe what I told you."

"Yes," said Appleby, "I think I can. You were often a fool, Tony, but
that contented you."

"I gave him twenty pounds. If I'd had any sense I would have knocked him
down instead; but it was an unpleasant story, and I was engaged to
Violet. Godfrey Palliser was bent on the match too, though it wasn't
that which influenced me. Then Davidson commenced to come for money
regularly, and I can't get out of the fact that I've been subsidizing
him without perjury; while it's evident that if I told the truth now
nobody would believe me. I tell you, Bernard, the thing has been
worrying the life out of me."

This was apparent from his strained voice and the dejection in his face,
but Appleby smiled reassuringly. "You should have gone to a lawyer long
ago, Tony; but you can leave it to me," he said. "Davidson expects you
to give him money to-night?"

"Yes. He makes me come out at midnight and meet him to show he holds the
whip over me. Thirty pounds--and I can only raise twenty--at half-past
eleven by the fir spinny! Have you the slightest hope of doing anything
with him?"

Appleby nodded as he took out his watch. "I shouldn't wonder if I bring
you good news to-morrow. Remember, you are to say nothing to anybody.
Give me what money you have and then go to sleep. You look as if you
needed it."

He took the notes Palliser handed him, and when he went away hung about
the head of the stairway until Violet Wayne came up with a white-haired
lady. He contrived to catch her eye, and though she passed on with her
companion within five minutes she came back again.

"Well?" she said expectantly.

Appleby smiled. "If you can let me have ten pounds and ask no questions
I think it will be an excellent investment, though it is quite possible
that I shall be able to hand you them back to-morrow," he said. "If I
were a richer man I would not ask you."

The girl made a little gesture of impatience and flitted away, but in a
few minutes she once more stood beside him, a trifle breathless, and
there was a crisp rustle, as she slipped something into his hand.

"Thank you ever so much! When you can you will tell me," she said.

Appleby only nodded, and went down the stairway. He took a riding crop
from the rack in the hall, and then passed through the drawing-room into
the conservatory, the outer door of which was not fastened yet. He
opened it noiselessly and slipped out into the night, taking the key
with him; but, though he did not know this, a man who afterwards
remembered it saw him and noticed that he carried the riding crop.




II -- DAVIDSON MEETS HIS MATCH


IT was with confused feelings that Appleby, treading softly as he
crossed the gravelled terrace, slipped into the gloom of a shrubbery.
There was a trace of frost in the air, and the stars shone brightly, but
here and there a thin white mist hung in filmy wisps. He was, however,
conscious of an elation which had a curious bracing effect. Violet Wayne
had trusted him with her confidence, and it was the first time a woman
of her station had cast more than a passing glance on him. Her reposeful
serenity, with its faint suggestion of imperiousness, had impressed him
more than her beauty, and he was sensible of an unbounded respect and
admiration for Tony's fiancee. Tony had also, in his indolent fashion,
and perhaps because the favors he dispensed cost him nothing, been a
good friend to him, which was, however, not astonishing, since Appleby
had fought most of his battles for him and stood between him and the
results of his easy-going carelessness at school. Tony Palliser was one
of the men who need the guidance of a stronger hand, and usually obtain
it.

Appleby had, however, affairs of his own to think of that night, and as
he swung across a misty meadow the half-formed resolution which had been
long in his mind took definite shape, and he decided he would not go
back to the drudgery his soul detested. His father had risen by valor
from the ranks, and the instincts he had stubbornly held in check at
last asserted themselves dominantly. He remembered the sordid poverty,
the struggle to maintain appearances, and the strain of forced attention
to an uncongenial task, and asked himself half contemptuously why he had
borne them so long. He had spent his early years in Spain, where he had
been taught out of charity by an army chaplain, and had reckless brown-
faced muleteers and smugglers and grave artillery officers, the
gatekeepers of the Mediterranean, for his friends, while the fortnight
spent at Northrop had brought back old associations overwhelmingly.

It was, however, not the leisure and wealth and luxury which appealed to
him--and indeed there was little of the latter at Northrop Hall--but the
smell of the brown woods and the ringing of the guns. There were also
the horses, for Appleby had learned to ride in Spain, the wide spaces he
could gallop through with tingling blood, and the hours he had spent
pitting every faculty against the wariness of the grayling in the
stream. He felt he could never go back to the old colorless life again,
and as he looked out into the dusky blueness under the stars and across
the dim landscape which rolled away before him, silent, and wide, and
shadowy, his courage rose. There was room, he felt, beyond the confines
of English cities for men with thews and sinews who were willing to hew
their own way to fortune out in the wind and sun.

He stopped for a few moments on a hillside and looked about him, while
his heart throbbed faster. There was still a light or two in the hall
behind him, but none in the village, and the earth lay asleep wrapped in
fleecy draperies of drifting mist, while the low murmur of the river
came out of the great stillness. He could see its pale blink where it
slid out from the gloom of a wood, and above, across the stubble where
the footpath led, a clump of rigid spires that rose black and solid
against the faintly luminous night. That, he knew, was the fir spinny
where he was to meet the blackmailer, and shaking all thought of his own
affairs from him he went on quietly resolute to do battle for his
friend. Appleby was an impulsive man, quick to decide; but there was
also an obdurate persistency in him, and the decision once made was
usually adhered to. Keeper Davidson was not to find an easy victim that
night.

He stopped outside the spinny with the riding crop held, where it would
not be seen, behind him, and a man who had been listening for his
footsteps came out of it. It was unfortunate for him that he had spent
most of the evening in the hostelry at the village, or he might have
recognized the difference between them and Tony Palliser's reluctant
tread. Appleby had come up with swift, resolute stride, as one who had a
purpose, and meant to accomplish it.

"Davidson?" he said, with a little ring in his voice, which was very
unlike Tony's then.

The man stared at him. "It was Mr. Palliser I expected to see," he said.

"I have come in place of him, and don't think it likely that he will
meet you here again," Appleby said dryly. "In fact, unless we can come
to some arrangement, it is very probable that you will get a month's
notice from Mr. Godfrey Palliser to-morrow."

Davidson laughed unpleasantly. "Mr. Tony tried that game before, and
found it wouldn't pay. Now, you listen to me, though I'm not telling you
anything you don't know. Mr. Tony has to marry money, and Miss Wayne is
a particular young lady. They say he's fond of her, too; but if I
thought it my duty to tell her the kind of man he is there'd be no more
talk of that match."

"The trouble is that Miss Wayne would not believe you," said Appleby.

Now, though Appleby was not aware of this, Davidson had consumed a good
deal of liquid refreshment that evening, or he might not have shown his
hand so plainly. Nor did he know that Appleby had any connection with
the legal profession.

"It would be easy convincing her when she saw his letter. I've got
witnesses--and a certificate," he said.

The sullen anger in the last words would probably have caught Appleby's
attention had he been an older man, and shown him that it was not
avarice alone which prompted Davidson. As it happened, however, he did
not notice it.

"That proves nothing," he said. "We do not dispute the fact it relates
to, but maintain that Mr. Palliser had no connection with it."

"Do you think you could convince anybody who heard my story?"

"We can try. Isn't it clear to you that Mr. Palliser can't go on
subsidizing you forever?"

"He'll go on until there's enough put by to bring his daughter up a
lady."

Again Appleby failed to discern the sincerity of conviction in
Davidson's tone, which would have been evident to him had he possessed
any of the qualities which go to make a successful lawyer.

"I think you are mistaken," he said. "It is quite clear to us that you
will tell your story sooner or later, and because it is Mr. Palliser
will tell it before you in his own way. That cuts the ground from under
your feet, you see. Then he will indict you and your daughter for
conspiracy. It is a somewhat serious thing to blackmail anybody, but you
shall have one more chance. I will pay you twenty pounds for Mr.
Palliser's letter, on condition that you sign a statement confessing
there is no truth in the slander you have brought against him, and leave
his uncle's service within a month from to-morrow."

The man stood silent a moment or two, his gun on his arm; and it was
unfortunate that Appleby could not see the passion in his face. A sullen
hatred of the class he served had smouldered within him since the day a
gunshot accident, for which he had obtained no adequate compensation,
left him with a limp, and now when he saw the game was up it blazed into
unreasoning anger. He may also have been as fond of his daughter as he
was of gold, and deceived by her, for the veins were swollen on his
forehead when he made a step forward.

"Who are you to thrust yourself into what doesn't concern you?" he said.

"I am a lawyer," said Appleby quietly. "Don't come any nearer!"

Davidson dropped the gun into the palm of his left hand with a rattle.
"I might have known it by your tricks," he said. "Well, I'll make you
fight, and we'll see who Miss Wayne will believe to-morrow. Now take
yourself and your money to ---- out of this!"

He raised the gun, and Appleby's calmness deserted him. With a sweep of
the riding crop he struck the barrel aside, and, perhaps without
Davidson intending it, there was a flash and an explosion. Then the
riding crop came down upon a dim white face. The man reeled, recovered,
and lurched forward, while next moment he and his adversary were panting
and straining in a breathless grapple. Davidson was a strong man, but
the blow had dazed him, and the refreshment consumed at the "Black Bull"
had endued him with an unreasoning passion, which was not an advantage
in a conflict with a man who kept his head. Appleby was also wiry, and
tolerably proficient in a certain useful art. Thus when he got his fist
home in a place where it would hurt Davidson slackened his grasp, and
Appleby struck again as he flung him off. He staggered backwards and
went down heavily. Appleby stood still until he rose shakily to his feet
again.

"Go home," he said. "You will be sorry for this tomorrow. It will
probably cost you twenty pounds."

Davidson turned without a word, and Appleby waited a minute or two
watching him cross the meadow towards the narrow, one-railed footbridge
that spanned the river. He was walking unevenly, but Appleby was too
shaken himself to trouble about his condition. Perhaps keeper Davidson
was still dazed by the blows dealt him, or his brain was clouded by
impotent anger, for he passed on, a dim, shadowy figure, into the gloom
of a coppice, and no man saw him alive again. Then Appleby went back to
the hall and let himself in through the conservatory. He found Tony
waiting him in a state of feverish anxiety, told him briefly what had
passed, and, assuring him that Davidson would in all probability listen
to reason next day, went to sleep. He also slept soundly, and awakened
later than usual when Tony's man, who had found knocking useless,
entered the room with some of his garments on his arm.

"Mr. Palliser was asking if you were up, sir, and they're getting
breakfast now," he said, and then glanced at the clothes. "I've been
giving them a brush. There was some mud on the trousers, and I notice a
seam split in the coat. I could ask one of the maids to put a stitch in
it before it gets worse."

"No," said Appleby, a trifle too hastily. "You can put them in my bag. I
am leaving by the night train."

He got into his tweeds, and went down to find the rest of the men who
had finished breakfast lounging about the hall, while Tony and his uncle
stood on the terrace outside. A dog-cart was also waiting, and another
vehicle coming up the avenue. Appleby commenced his breakfast,
wondering--because he surmised that Miss Wayne would be anxious to hear
what he had accomplished--whether any of the ladies would come down
before the shooters started. By and by he saw a light dress flit across
the gallery at the head of the stairway, and immediately got up with the
ostensible purpose of going back to his room. He, however, stopped in
the corridor which led out of the gallery, where, as he had expected,
Violet Wayne was waiting him. She usually appeared to as much advantage
in the morning as she did under the glitter of the lamps at night, but
Appleby fancied that she had not slept very well. There was, so far as
he could see, nobody else about.

"You have something to tell me?" she said quietly.

"No," said Appleby. "I fancied I should have had, but instead I have ten
pounds to give you back."

"Then some plan you had has failed?"

"Not exactly! I am going to try a bolder course."

The girl looked at him steadily. "I have trusted you, Mr. Appleby. Would
it be too much if I asked you to take me into your confidence?"

Appleby shook his head. "I am afraid I can't very well do that just
now," he said. "In the meanwhile you can be kind to Tony. He has been
foolish--and a trifle weak--but he has done nothing that you could not
readily forgive him."

There was a faint sparkle in Violet Wayne's eyes, and a suspicion of
color in her cheek. "How do you know that my code is as lenient as your
own--and are you wise in asking me to take so much on trust?"

Appleby smiled gravely. "I think I grasp your meaning, but if you try to
follow up any clue I may have given you it can only lead you into a
pitfall. Please wait, and I think I can engage that Tony will tell you
the whole story. It would come best from himself, but he must
substantiate it, and that is what I expect I can enable him to do."

The color grew a trifle plainer in Violet Wayne's cheek, and Appleby,
who guessed her thoughts, shook his head.

"There is a question you are too proud to ask, but I will venture to
answer it," he said. "I have known Tony a long while, and he has never
wavered in his allegiance to you. To doubt that would be an injustice
you have too much sense to do yourself. Now you have the simple truth,
and if it is a trangression to tell it you, you must remember that I
have had no training in conventional niceties."

The girl looked at him with a curious little glow in her eyes. "Tony has
the gift of making good friends," she said. "One could have faith in
you."

She turned and left him, while Appleby, who went down, found Godfrey
Palliser talking to the under-keeper on the terrace. He was a spare,
gray-haired gentleman, formal and fastidious, and betrayed his
impatience only by a faint incisiveness of speech.

"Davidson has kept us waiting half an hour, it has never happened
before, and it shall not occur again," he said. "You have been round to
the lodge, Evans?"

"Yes, sir," said the man. "They had not seen him since last night. He
told them he was going to the fir spinny. Some of the Darsley men had
been laying snares for hares."

"It shall be looked into, but we will make a start now as you have sent
the beaters on," said Palliser, who turned to his guests. "I am sorry we
have kept you waiting, gentlemen."

They started, and, as it happened, Tony and Appleby sat at the back of
the dog-cart which followed the larger vehicle, while the rattle of
gravel beneath the wheels rendered their conversation inaudible to those
who sat in front.

"You heard what Evans said?" asked Tony anxiously.

"Of course!" said Appleby. "I am almost afraid Davidson has made a bolt.
If he hadn't he would have come for the twenty pounds."

"I hope so," and Tony drew in a deep breath. "It would be a merciful
relief to feel I had seen the last of him. Why in the name of all that's
wonderful are you afraid he has gone?"

"Because I wanted a statement and your letter from him," said Appleby.
"You see, you will have to tell Miss Wayne that story sooner or later."

"Tell her!" said Tony blankly. "I'll be shot if I do!"

"Then she'll find out, and it will be considerably the worse for you."

Now, Tony Palliser was a good-natured man, and had as yet never done
anything actually dishonorable, but whenever it was possible he avoided
a difficulty, which, because difficulties must now and then be grappled
with, not infrequently involved him in a worse one. He lived for the
present only, and was thereby sowing a crop of trouble which he would
surely have to reap in the future.

"I don't think it's likely, and there is no reason why I should make
unpleasantness--it wouldn't be kind," he said.

"You don't know Violet yet. She is almost unmercifully particular, and
now and then makes one feel very small and mean. It would hurt her
horribly to know I'd been mixed up in the affair at all--and, the fact
is, I don't feel equal to telling her anything of that kind. Besides, I
did kiss the girl, you see--and I don't think Violet would understand
what prompted me."

"Still," said Appleby dryly, "that story will have to be told."

Just then one of the other men touched his shoulder and asked a
question, while there are topics which when once left off are difficult
to commence again; but Appleby fancied that Tony had made one incorrect
statement. He felt, strange as it seemed, that he knew Violet Wayne
better than her prospective husband did.

They drove on, and nothing of moment happened during the shooting, or at
the lunch they were invited to at one of Palliser's neighbor's houses,
though Tony, who seemed to have recovered his spirits, shot unusually
well. He also bantered the beaters and keepers, and, though he was as
generous as such men usually are, the largesses he distributed somewhat
astonished the recipients. It was a bright day of early winter, with
clear sunlight that took the edge off the faint frost; and most men with
healthy tastes would have found the hours spent in the brown woods,
where the beech leaves still hung in festoons about the lower boughs,
invigorating, even if they had not just had a weight lifted off their
minds. Tony made the most of them, and it was, perhaps, as well he did,
for it was long before he passed another day as free from care again.

Still, the troubles he could not see were trooping about him, and it was
doubtless as part of the scheme that was to test him, and bring about
his retribution when he was found wanting, that a nut on the bush of the
dog-cart's wheel slackened during the homeward journey. As a result,
four men and several guns were flung without serious injury into the
road; and when the horse had been taken to a neighboring farm, Tony and
three of his friends found themselves under the necessity of walking
home. He took them the shortest way by lane and stile, and they came to
the footbridge across the river as dusk was closing down. Both he and
Appleby long remembered that evening.

The sun had sunk behind a bank of smoky cloud, and a cold wind wailed
dolefully through the larches in the wood, under which the black water
came sliding down. There was no mist in the meadows now, and straggling
hedgerow and coppice rose shadowy and dim against the failing light. The
river, however, still shone faintly as it swirled round the pool beneath
the bridge, and the men stopped a moment and leaned upon the single
rail. It was seldom any one but a keeper took that path to the hall.

Appleby noticed how the dead leaves came sailing down, and little
clusters of them swung round and round in the eddies. It was a trifle,
but it fixed his attention, and often afterwards he could see them drift
and swing at the mercy of the current. Then it seemed to him that their
aimless wandering had been curiously portentous. He, however, looked up
when Tony struck a match to light a cigarette with, and saw his face by
the pale flame of it. Tony shook off his troubles readily, and there was
a twinkle in his eyes, while his laugh rang lightly at a jest one of the
others made. Then a man standing further along the bridge stretched out
his hand.

"There's a stone among the boulders at the tail of the pool that seems
different from the rest. One could almost fancy it was somebody's head,"
he said.

"Good Lord!" said one of the others. "One could do more than fancy it.
Can't you see his shoulder just above the water?"

Tony dropped his cigarette, and stared at Appleby with a curious horror
in his face, but the latter gripped his arm.

"Keep your head!" he said sternly.

Nobody else heard him, for the rest were hastening across the bridge,
and in a moment or two one of them sprang down among the boulders at the
edge of the pool. He called out sharply as the others followed him, and
standing very still when they came up with him, they saw a white face
that moved as the stream swirled about it looking up at them. A wet
shoulder also bumped softly against a stone.

"I think it's your keeper, Palliser," said one of them a trifle
hoarsely. "It would have been more pleasant if somebody else had found
him, but we can't leave him in the water."

Tony seemed to shiver, and glanced at Appleby. "Yes," he said, and his
voice was very strained, "it's Davidson."

It was Appleby who, as one of the rest remembered, stooped down and
grasped the dead man's arm. "Give me a lift," he said.

The men had evidently little liking for the task, but they accomplished
it, and stood still again when the rigid object lay with the water
draining from it at their feet.

"He must have fallen over the bridge and struck his head. There are
stones yonder, and you can see the bruise," said one. "Still, it might
not have happened that way, and it seems to me we had better push on to
the hall, and send somebody for the police."

They went on in haste, and twenty minutes later Tony stood, a little
white in face, in Appleby's room.

"I don't ask you whether it was the truth you told me last night," he
said.

"No," said Appleby, who was flinging articles of clothing into his bag.
"I could not have taken that from you, but I told you what happened
precisely. Perhaps I should have seen him across the bridge, but I never
thought of it. Still, there will be an inquest, and when they find out a
little more it will be difficult to convince an average jury that one of
us didn't kill him."

"It could be managed," said Tony, a trifle hoarsely.

"Yes," said Appleby, "I think it could, though I couldn't be certain;
but, if there was a defendant, not before everything came out. That
would spoil my two best friends' lives. You see, he did not sign the
statement, and folks are very quick to believe the kind of story that
would certainly get about."

"That would ruin me," said Tony. "Godfrey Palliser would turn me out for
bringing it on him. It's a trifle horrible. You have got to help me!"

"Yes," said Appleby, closing the bag with a snap. "I fancy it would.
Still, there will be no defendant, because I'm going out of the country.
If you sent to the bank you might lend me fifty pounds, and tell
somebody to get the dog-cart out. There's a train I can get through to
Liverpool starts in an hour. If I am ever able, I'll send you back the
money."

Palliser stared at him. "But they may bring it in homicide against you!
I can't let you do this for me."

Appleby smiled curiously. "I had decided to go, anyway, and I haven't a
friend who would worry about me except yourself, and perhaps Miss Wayne.
It would be very different with you. Now, don't waste a minute, Tony. I
have made my mind up."

Tony Palliser had usually yielded to the domination of his friend, and
was not in a condition to think very concisely then, so he did what he
was bidden, and ten minutes later grasped Appleby's hand as the dog-cart
came up to the door. He did not remember if he said anything, but
Appleby, perhaps for the groom's benefit, laughed as he drew the rug
about him.

"You will remember to send on the cigars you promised me," he said.

Then the groom flicked the horse, the dog-cart rattled away, and Tony
Palliser was left standing, flushed in face, on the steps, with his
heart beating painfully.




III -- TONY CANNOT DECIDE


THE beat of hoofs died away, and Tony shivered as he strove to collect
his scattered wits. He wanted to think, but mental effort had always
been distasteful to his easy-going nature, and now the faculty of
concentration had deserted him. It was also very cold out on the
terrace, for the raw wind was driving a thin drizzle before it, and Tony
was fond of warmth and light, so with a little shake of his shoulders he
went back into the house, and sought inspiration in a stiff brandy-and-
soda. After that he felt a little more cheerful, and decided that in the
meanwhile there was nothing to be done but refrain from unnecessary
worry and wait events, which was the usual course with him. There was,
it seemed, nothing to be gained by involving himself before suspicion
was cast upon his friend.

He, however, spent an unpleasant five minutes with his uncle, who asked
a few general questions respecting the affair, in the library, and then
went down to dinner, where Violet Wayne did not find him a very
entertaining companion. She, however, noticed that he allowed his glass
to be filled more frequently than usual, for Tony was an abstemious man,
and during a lull in the conversation turned to him.

"I have spoken to you at least three times without getting an answer,
Tony," she said. "One could almost fancy that you had something on your
mind to-night."

Tony did not meet the questioning gaze of the big grave eyes, though
there was a sympathetic gleam in them. "I have a headache. Gun headache,
you know," he said. "I got a warm corner, and fired every cartridge I
had. I had them specially loaded with an extra quarter-ounce, too."

Violet Wayne appeared thoughtful, for she had heard the other men
grumbling at the scarcity of pheasants that afternoon; but she was a
wise young woman, and did not tell Tony so.

"What has become of Mr. Appleby?" she asked.

"Gone away," said Tony. "He left just after we came in."

Again Violet Wayne glanced at him with grave quietness, but Tony was
looking at his plate just then.

"His train does not leave for an hour yet," she said.

Violet Wayne did not often speak without reflection, but she blundered
then. Tony Palliser was not the man to boldly choose his path, but
rather addicted to follow the one events seemed to force him into, and
she who might have proved his good angel helped to start him down hill.

"He was going to Liverpool," he said, and a moment later regretted it.

"To Liverpool! What has taken him there? He told me he was going back to
his office."

Tony looked round in search of inspiration, and did not find it. It was
also a somewhat fateful moment for him, because he had as yet been
guilty of nothing more than a passing indiscretion, which the woman
would have forgiven him. Had he decided to take her into his confidence
she would have believed his story, and she had sufficient strength of
character to carry him with clean hands through the difficulty. As it
happened, however, he was not looking at her, and saw only the glitter
of light on glass and silver and the faces of his friends. Tony was as
fond of pleasant company as he was of luxury, and what he saw reminded
him that he had a good deal to lose. That put him on his guard, and he
took the first fateful step in haste, without realizing where it would
lead him.

"I don't quite know," he said; "Bernard isn't communicative. He asked me
for the dog-cart, and I didn't worry him."

Violet Wayne deferred her questions, though she was not satisfied. She
had her duty to her hostess, and because news of what had happened had
got about felt it incumbent on her to do what she could to lessen the
vague constraint, especially as Tony, who wanted to think and could not,
did nothing whatever. He was glad when the meal was over, but afterwards
appeared to even less advantage in the billiard room, where one of the
men commented on his play.

"You are showing remarkably bad form, Tony," he said. "What is the
matter with you? In your case it can't be worry, because there is
nothing a man could wish for you apparently haven't got."

Tony did worse at the next stroke, and put down his cue. "It's a fact
that I can't play to-night," he said. "You were not with us at the
bridge, and it wasn't a nice thing we had to do. As to the other remark,
I suppose I've got my worries like the rest of you; but since you will
get on just as well without me I think I'll go to bed."

He went out, and the man who had spoken laughed. "That is just the one
thing that is wrong with Tony--he gives up too easily and doesn't play
the game out when it seems to be going against him," he said. "He had
Bernard Appleby to help him through at school, but I have a notion that
Miss Wayne would do as much for him now if he would let her, and if he's
wise he will. Men like Tony generally find somebody to stand behind
them, but that slackness is the only fault anybody could find in him.
Tony never did a crooked thing."

"No," said another man dryly. "Still, it is comparatively easy to go
straight when you are never called upon to stand up under a deflecting
pressure."

"If Tony hasn't had to do that yet, he will most certainly have to
sooner or later, and Miss Wayne is the woman to help him," said his
companion. "Will you take his cue and finish the fifty for him,
Lonsdale? It is, you see, quite the usual thing."

Tony in the meanwhile sat staring at the grate in his room. No definite
course had yet occurred to him, but he was conscious of a vague relief.
Davidson, at least, could not come back to trouble him, and Tony knew
that his daughter, whom he had done no wrong, did not possess her
father's pertinacity. He fancied she could be easily dealt with, and
rising with a little shake of his shoulders he went to bed, and, as it
happened, slept almost as well as usual. Next day, however, events
commenced to happen, for during the morning Godfrey Palliser received a
visit from a sergeant of police. Soon afterwards he sent for Tony, and
it was with distinct uneasiness the latter entered the library.

Godfrey Palliser sat, gray-haired and somewhat grim of face, beside the
fire; and he was a punctilious English gentleman with a respect for
conventional traditions and no great penetration, to whom Tony owed his
present status and all he hoped for in the future. He had led a simple,
wholesome life, and though it was perhaps not unwarranted, placed an
undue value upon the respect his tenants and neighbors accorded him.

"This is an especially unfortunate affair," he said. "Sit down. I want
to talk to you."

"Yes, sir," said Tony, wondering what was coming.

Godfrey Palliser drummed on the chair arm with his fingers. "There will
be an inquest, and as I am, most unfortunately in this case, a
magistrate, Sergeant Stitt thought it fit to consult with me. He has
suspicions that there has been foul play."

"Stitt is a meddlesome idiot," said Tony. "It seemed quite evident to me
that Davidson struck his head when he fell off the bridge."

The elder man made a gesture of negation. "Unfortunately he left his gun
behind him. There was a dent on one barrel, and Stitt fancied that the
grass round the spot where he found it had been trampled. That, and the
condition of Davidson's clothing, points to a scuffle."

Tony gasped, for he had not expected this. "There is not a man in the
neighborhood who would have injured Davidson," he said.

Godfrey Palliser flashed a quick glance at him. "Do you know when
Bernard left the hall the night before it happened?"

Tony braced himself with an effort. "I don't quite remember, sir."

"Then I can tell you. It was a few minutes after eleven, and he took the
path to the footbridge. When he came back his clothes were muddy."

Tony sat still a moment, horribly conscious that Godfrey Palliser was
watching him. Then he broke out: "It's wholly impossible, sir,
unutterably absurd! Nobody would kill a man without the least motive."

Godfrey Palliser's face grew a trifle grimmer. "There may have been a
motive. Lucy Davidson was pretty, and, I understand, vain and flighty,
while she disappeared, I think, a little too suddenly. You will remember
when Bernard was last here."

Tony stood up, with a dampness on his face and his hands trembling.
"Good Lord, sir, you can't believe that!" he said. "Bernard never had
any failings of the kind. It must"--and Tony gasped and stared round the
room--"have been poachers. You will remember Evans said Davidson had gone
out to look for somebody who had been laying snares."

To his vast relief he saw that Palliser clutched at the suggestion. It
would perhaps not have appeared very conclusive to another man, but
Palliser was anxious as well as willing to be convinced, which makes a
difference.

"Yes," he said. "That is the most sensible thing you have said for a
long while, and I sincerely hope events will prove you right. I am
getting an old man, and if a connection of the family and a guest in my
house had been guilty of such an intrigue and crime, I think I could
scarcely have held up my head again. No breath of scandal has touched
our name, and I could not forgive the man who brought a shadow of ill-
repute upon it."

The speech had its effect, for Tony was aware that he had nothing to
expect if he forfeited Godfrey Palliser's good opinion. He also quite
realized the fact that he was singularly devoid of the qualities
essential to the man who finds it necessary to make his own way in the
world, and very much in love with Violet Wayne. These considerations
made for silence. Tony, however, did not discover until later that the
next person Palliser sent for was the girl. It was with reluctance he
did so, and he stood up leaning against the mantel when he had drawn her
out a chair.

"I understand that you saw Bernard Appleby immediately before he left
the house the night before last," he said.

The girl appeared perplexed. "I do not know how you came to hear of it,
but as a matter of fact I did," she said.

"Then "--and Palliser made a little deprecatory gesture--"I feel sure,
when I tell you that they are necessary, you will excuse me asking you a
question or two. You met him in the corridor, I think with intent. What
had he to say to you?"

A little flush crept into the girl's face. "He asked me to give him ten
pounds. This will no doubt astonish you!"

It certainly did, and had Godfrey Palliser been a little less
punctilious he might have betrayed it. As it was, he said in a perfectly
level voice, "May I ask you for what purpose?"

There was no hesitation about the answer, and as he met Violet Wayne's
eyes the unpleasant thoughts which momentarily obtruded themselves upon
the man vanished again, and left him with a faint sense of shame.

"I had asked him to do me a favor which would entail some little
expenditure," she said. "It was, in fact, to do a kindness to somebody I
wanted to benefit, and could not have any bearing on your object in
making this inquiry. I know you will take my word for that."

Godfrey Palliser was not gifted with much penetration, but the girl's
composure had its effect on him, and he made her a little respectful
inclination. "It would go a long way with me, my dear, even if the
testimony of my eyes were against it; and Tony never did a thing that
pleased me more than when he told me he had succeeded in inducing you to
marry him," he said. "It is quite evident that you can throw no light on
the affair."

Violet Wayne left him, a little perplexed, but relieved. As he believed
what she had told him implicitly, his thoughts fixed themselves upon
Tony's suggestion, and he commenced to sift what he had heard for
anything that would confirm the poacher theory. He meant to do his duty
as a magistrate, but he had made a fetish of the family honor, and the
man who knows exactly what he is looking for has the better chance of
finding it. Accordingly he almost convinced himself, and proceeded to
another conference with Sergeant Stitt, who was a little more obtuse
than superior.

Violet Wayne was, however, not relieved at all. Only one hypothesis
suggested itself to her, and that was that the unfortunate keeper had
had some hold upon Appleby, but she promptly dismissed it as wholly
untenable. She felt convinced that the man who had been Tony's loyal
friend could have done nothing that he need blush for, and the fact that
he had been willing to take ten pounds from her was an additional proof
of his innocence rather than evidence against it. She felt absolutely
convinced that he would never have abused her confidence by asking her
for the money had he desired it for his own purposes. This conclusion
naturally led to the supposition that he had involved himself on Tony's
behalf, but she would not harbor that thought for a moment; while
Appleby, whom she believed implicitly, had told her that Tony had done
nothing wrong.

Still, it was evident that Tony was in trouble, and as he did not go
shooting with the rest she found him idling in an empty room when dusk
was closing down. He was standing by the hearth looking down into the
flickering flame; but the fashion in which he started when she gently
touched his shoulder was significant.

"You might have something upon your conscience, Tony," she said, with a
little smile. "Sit down and talk to me. I have scarcely seen you to-
day."

She sank into a low chair, and the uncertain firelight forced up her
face and gleaming hair against the shadowy background. The pose, wholly
unstudied as it was, also suited her, and she smiled as she saw the
appreciation in the eyes of her companion. Tony's regard for her was
respectfully deferential, but he was a man, and she did not disdain at
times to profit by the advantages nature had endowed her with.

"I never saw you look better than you do just now," he said, and laughed
as he found a place on the stool he placed at her feet.

"Turn your head a little, Tony; I want to see you," the girl said
softly. "Now, what has made you so quiet today?"

Tony looked at her, and the effect was unfortunate. He saw the calm eyes
shining with unusual tenderness, and felt the full influence of her
beauty, even while he remembered that Appleby had said she would find
out the story sooner or later and then it would be bad for him. He also
determined, foolishly, that if the revelation must come at all it
should, at least, be delayed as long as possible.

"I have my little worries, but they vanish when you appear," he said.

Violet Wayne shook her head. "That was pretty, but not quite sincere,"
she said. "In some respects I am older than you--and you are in trouble,
dear. Perhaps if you told me everything I could help you."

Tony turned his head away, and checked a groan as he stared at the fire.
"I have been a little thoughtless, and one must pay for that kind of
thing," he said. "Still, it would be most unfitting to trouble you with
my trifling difficulties." He felt a little constraining touch on his
shoulder, and a low voice said, "Is it money? You must not be proud,
dear, for I have plenty, and it could buy me no greater pleasure than to
see your cares melt away."

Tony flushed a little. "That is out of the question, Violet, and you
exaggerate," he said. "I haven't any real cares, you know."

The girl smiled at him. "Only very good imitations, Tony; but perhaps
you are right. I should dearly like to give you whatever you have need
of, but it would not please me to see you willing to take it. Still, why
did Appleby go out at eleven o'clock that night?"

It was a chance shot, but it told, and had results Violet Wayne could
not have anticipated. Tony started a little.

"Why should you ask me?" he said.

Violet Wayne was not as a rule demonstrative. Indeed, her behavior that
evening would have astonished those who thought they knew her best, but
the touch of her hand on the man's shoulder was caressing, and as she
leaned forward nearer him there was a curious softness in her eyes.

"I want you to listen, Tony, and I am not going to find fault with you,"
she said. "When you showed your preference for me people who I know are
wise talked to me of you. They had very little to urge against you
except one thing, which I think is true. They said you were a trifle too
fond of shirking a difficulty."

"I hope you thanked them for their kindness," said Tony dryly.

The girl pressed his shoulder. "Tony," she said, "shall I tell you why I
liked you? Well, it was because I fancied the respect you showed me was
genuine, and you were open and generous. That, at least, was one of the
reasons, for I detest a cunning man. I am ready to give you everything,
but I shall expect a good deal from you; and now you see why I am not
pleased with your answer to my question."

It was an unexpected opportunity, and, though the man aid not know this,
the last he would have. The girl, as she had said, was willing to give
him all she had to offer, of which her faith in him was not the least,
but he had not the courage to put it to the test. Had he done so she
would have taken his word, and believed in it against all other
testimony; but the story he had to tell was not a pleasant one, and he
dreaded her incredulity, in which he wronged her past forgiveness.
Meanwhile, looking up at her he saw, not the love and strength which
would have saved him from his weaknesses, but the calm, proud face which
was tender, too, just then, the gleaming red-gold hair, and the
beautifully moulded form. In place of speaking he gazed at her a moment
with passion in his eyes.

"I can never understand how you came to think of me at all," he said. "I
am not fit to dust your shoes; but if I lost you now I think it would
kill me."

The girl checked him with a little quiet gesture, and laid the hand she
raised from his shoulder on his forehead. "I like to hear you tell me
so, but there are times when the man who is willing to lose everything
gains the most. I wonder if you understand that, Tony? There are men who
do."

"No," said Tony in honest bewilderment, "I'm afraid I can't."

"Still," said the girl softly, "it is true; but perhaps it isn't seemly
that I should preach to you. Am I to conclude that if any odium follows
your friend because he went out that night you could not dispel it?"

This left a loophole, which was unfortunate, because the man reflected
that he could offer no convincing testimony as to what had really
happened at the fir spinny.

"No," he said a trifle hoarsely, "I could not."

Violet Wayne looked at him steadily, and Tony, who saw the gravity in
her eyes, felt his heart thumping furiously. Then she said very slowly:
"Since you have given me your word we will never mention this again."

Tony drew in his breath as he turned his head away. The crisis had
passed, and he knew that Violet Wayne believed him; but a little shiver
ran through him, for he felt that he was committed to a course of
deception now, and that if exposure came he could not face her scorn.
She was a proud woman, who seldom unbent even to him as she had done
that evening, and his one impulse was to lead her thoughts as far from
the question she had asked him as he conveniently could.

"You hinted that you had met men who would give up everything for--a
fancy," he said. "Do I know them?"

"You know one. I think Bernard Appleby would sacrifice a good deal for a
friend--or a woman he respected."

"He could not help it in your case. You could compel most men to do
almost anything for you."

The girl shook her head. "Even if that is true it would not gratify me
much," she said. "It is only those nearest and dearest to me I expect
the most from, and that I am not worthy of it does not affect the case.
Still, I think we have talked sufficiently in this strain."

Tony rose and stooped over her chair, but the girl made a little
restraining gesture, and he straightened himself again.

"No," she said quietly. "Not now, Tony. We are strange creatures; but I
think if you had made me a confession a little while ago I could have
forgiven you anything and kissed you afterwards."

Tony said nothing, and a maid came in with a light; but he spent a very
unpleasant half-hour when Violet Wayne left him. Now it had slipped away
unprofited by, he saw what that opportunity would have meant for him.
Tony was not clever, but he realized that fate does not give men such
chances frequently.




IV -- THE VERDICT


THE inquest on keeper Davidson was duly held, and at the commencement
seemed likely to cause Tony Palliser less anxiety than he had expected.
There were reasons for this, and among them was the fact that the
Pallisers had lived at Northrop for generations, and the fathers of the
men who served them had watched their game and groomed their horses.
Godfrey Palliser was also a liberal master, who seldom put an embargo on
any man's perquisites; while Tony scattered pleasant words and silver
with a tactful kindliness that made either doubly acceptable.

There was accordingly a desire to spare them unpleasantness in the minds
of those who attended the informal courts of inquiry held at the "Black
Bull," as the result of which the men who appeared to testify at the one
sanctioned by the law of the land came there with convictions already
formed, for Northrop village had thrashed out the question. Northrop
knew all about Tony's flirtation with Lucy Davidson, but it also knew a
good deal more about that lady than Tony did, and exculpated him. He
had, it was true, been seen to give Davidson five pounds, but that was
not an astonishing thing when the friends he brought down had been
enthusiastic over, the partridge shooting provided them; while there
were not many men in his uncle's service he had not given sovereigns to.
The men remembered this, and hoped for more.

It was also known that he had not left his room on the eventful night,
and though everybody was aware that Appleby had gone out, the guests at
the hall were occasionally addicted to taking nocturnal strolls after an
evening in the billiard room. Northrop accordingly knew just how much it
meant to admit when it attended the inquest, and when the rustic mind
adopts that attitude there is nothing further to be extracted from it.

The coroner did not elucidate a great deal when he commenced his
inquiry. Tony, who appeared distressed by the recollection, as indeed he
was, deposed to the finding of the body and was corroborated by two of
his friends. He was listened to sympathetically. Sergeant Stitt
testified that he had found signs which apparently suggested a scuffle,
but could not be certain there had been one. Then a hush of attention
followed the appearance of the doctor. He alluded to certain bruises.

"The one upon the head was evidently caused by a fall upon a stone,
which would, I think, alone have produced insensibility," he said. "The
one upon the cheek was apparently the result of a blow from a stick, but
it might have been occasioned by a fall."

"Would either of the blows alone have occasioned death?" asked a
juryman.

"Not directly," said the doctor. "The cause of death was exhaustion
resulting from immersion. A man who fell upon the boulders beneath the
bridge and rolled into the water would be very likely to succumb in that
fashion."

Two servants from the hall were called, and then Tony's man. "I saw Mr.
Appleby go out," he said. "It was about eleven o'clock, but might have
been later. He took something from a rack which held sticks and riding-
whips. He usually did take a stick. What do I mean by usually? Well, he
would walk down the avenue and home by the footpath now and then just
before he went to his room at night. I heard him come in about half an
hour later. I noticed mud on his shoes and trousers next morning; but he
would have to cross a wet place before he reached the lawn."

Everybody seemed satisfied; but there was a little murmur when Miss
Wayne appeared, and somewhat indignant glances were cast upon Sergeant
Stitt. She wore a veil, but she removed it when she turned to the jury;
and it was in a clear, cold voice, which had a trace of haughtiness in
it, she answered the questions asked her.

"I am. I believe, the last person Mr. Appleby spoke to before he went
out," she said. "So far as I noticed he did not appear disturbed or in
any way irritated. I met him at the head of the stairway."

"Was the meeting accidental?"

A faint trace of color crept into the girl's cheek, but it was in a
clear, even voice she said: "He had given me to understand that he
wished to see me."

"Had he anything in particular to say to you?"

One or two of the jury made it evident that they considered the question
in bad taste, but there was a curious silence when it was seen that the
witness hesitated.

"He asked me for ten pounds," she said.

Tony gasped when this was told him, and felt his face grow a trifle
warm, while a little thrill of indignation ran through him. He had been
pleased to see his friend and sweetheart on good terms, but that one
should borrow ten pounds from the other suggested a degree of intimacy
he had not contemplated.

"Do you know why he wanted the money?" asked the coroner.

The girl looked at him steadily, and nobody saw that her hands were
trembling. "No," she said coldly. "That is, I do not know exactly. I
had, however, asked him to do me a favor which might cost a little
money, and surmised that he needed some. It was not quite certain that I
should see him on the morrow."

"What was the favor?"

Violet Wayne straightened herself with an almost imperceptible movement,
but there was a change in her pose, and she held her shapely head
higher. "It had nothing to do with anything that could concern this
inquiry," she said.

"You are on oath, Miss Wayne," said the coroner. "Remembering that, you
are willing to repeat the assurance you have just given me?"

"Yes," said the girl, standing very still, though every nerve in her was
tingling. She long remembered the strain she underwent just then, but it
was not until afterwards she was sorry that she had submitted to it. She
did nothing by half, and her love for Tony carried an obligation with
it. There were only one or two people, and Tony was not among them, who
realized all that Violet Wayne was, but they paid her a respectful
homage they offered to no other woman.

The coroner had not seen her until that morning, but her bearing, and
perhaps her beauty, had an effect, for he signified that he was
contented, and Godfrey Palliser was called. He carried himself a trifle
stiffly, and was as usual immaculate in dress while it was with a
suggestion of carefully suppressed annoyance, which some of those
present sympathized with, he gave his evidence.

Davidson had served him four years, he said. He frequently went round
the woods at night, and had of late suspected that poachers had been at
work about the fir spinny. So far as he knew, and he had made inquiries,
nobody but Bernard Appleby, a relation of his own, and a young man of
unimpeachable character, had gone out of his house on the night in
question. Appleby had spent fourteen days at the hall and it was at
least twelve months since he had stayed there before. It appeared
unlikely that he should have intended to meet Davidson.

Palliser was followed by a teamster, whose evidence made an impression.
"I came out of the 'Black Bull' with Davidson at ten minutes to eleven,"
he said. "He wasn't exactly what one would call sober, though a man who
didn't know him wouldn't have noticed it. He told me he was going round
by the fir spinny to see if he could catch somebody who'd been laying
snares. I told him to be careful he didn't pitch over the footbridge."

Most of those present were sensible of a little relief. Nothing
unpleasant could, it seemed, transpire now, and the jury, who waited for
Appleby to inform them that he had seen nothing of Davidson during his
stroll, began to see what their verdict would be. There was also no
great show of interest when the coroner asked for Bernard Appleby.

He asked twice, however, and there was no answer, while the jury
exchanged significant glances when five minutes passed and the witness
did not appear. Then there was a curious silence as Sergeant Stitt,
flushed with haste, came in.

"Mr. Appleby was duly summoned, sir," he said. "I have just received
this telegram from the solicitors he is engaged with."

Nobody moved while the coroner opened the message, and there was deep
stillness as he read aloud: "In reply to inquiry Appleby has not resumed
his duties here as expected. Have no clue to his whereabouts. Anxious
for information."

"It will be the duty of the police to discover them as soon as
possible," he said. "Have you any notion, Sergeant Stitt?"

Stitt led in a young man whom everybody recognized as the booking clerk
from the station four miles away. "Mr. Appleby bought a ticket for
Liverpool just in time to catch the train on the evening Davidson's body
was found," he said. "He came into the office and sat down about a
minute. I noticed he turned up the steamer sailings in the paper he
borrowed."

"A mail-boat left for New York the following afternoon," said Sergeant
Stitt.

The effect was evident. Men looked at one another with suspicion in
their eyes, the coroner sent for Palliser and conferred with him and
Stitt, while the heavy stillness the murmur of their voices emphasized
was curiously significant. Hitherto nobody had seriously thought of
connecting Appleby with Davidson's death, but it now appeared that there
could be only one meaning to the fact that he had sought safety in
flight. Then the coroner stood up.

"It is unfortunate that more precautions were not taken to secure the
attendance of so important a witness as Mr. Appleby," he said. "As it
appears tolerably certain that he is no longer in this country, there
is, I think, nothing to be gained by postponing the inquiry, and it is
for you to consider whether you can arrive at a decision without his
testimony."

The jury were not long over the work, and the Northrop carpenter and
wheelwright made their decision known. "We find," he said, "that the
deceased died of exhaustion as the result of a fall from the footbridge,
during, or very soon after, a struggle with a person, or more than one
person, by whom he was injured. We recommend that a double fence be
placed on the said bridge, with three by two standards and two rails
well tennoned in."

"I am afraid that is a trifle too ambiguous," said the coroner.

There was another consultation, and this time the verdict was concise.
"Manslaughter by some person or persons unknown."

"It will now be the duty of the police to find them," said the coroner.

Northrop Hall was almost empty of its guests that evening. They, of
course, knew what everybody's suspicions now pointed to, and while it
was unpleasant to leave abruptly, felt that it would be an especially
tactful thing to Godfrey Palliser accepted their excuses with dry
concurrence, but he pressed Violet Wayne and her aunt to remain. It
would be a kindness, he said, because Tony seemed considerably
distressed by the affair. The girl fancied that he appeared so when he
came into the room where she sat beside a sinking fire. Only one lamp
was lighted and the room was dim; while a cold wind wailed outside, and
the rain beat upon the windows. Tony shivered, and his face seemed a
trifle haggard when he stopped and leaned on the back of her chair.

"It is a wild night, he said.

"Tell me what you are thinking, Tony," said the girl, "I fancy I know."

"I was thinking of the big liner driving through the blackness with
Bernard on board. She will be plunging forecastle under into the
Atlantic combers now. I almost wish I were on board her too."

"But I should be here," the girl said softly. "Do you want to leave me,
Tony?"

Tony laughed. "Oh, I talk at random now and then, and I'm not quite
myself to-day. That confounded coroner made me savage for one thing. Did
you feel it very much?"

"Can't you see that I am tired, dear?"

Tony, who moved a little, saw it plainly by the pallor of her face and
the weariness in her eyes.

"I felt I could have killed the officious beast," he said, and stood
still, looking down on her irresolutely. "But whatever did you give
Bernard ten pounds for, Violet?"

"Is there any reason why I should tell you?"

"Yes"--and the man's tone suggested that he felt his grievance was
warranted. "I think there is. Of course, I'm not a censorious person--I
can't afford to be--but it really didn't seem quite the thing, you know."

The protest was perhaps natural, but Violet Wayne checked a little sigh.
She was in love with Tony, and that meant a good deal, but he was trying
now and then, and she had discovered that his views were narrow, and now
and then somewhat mean. Indeed, she had once or twice received an almost
painful astonishment when he had made them plain to her.

In the present case his reproaches were especially ill-timed after what
she had suffered on his behalf. Tony was in difficulties, and she had
desired to free him of them; but it had been clear that he must be
helped surreptitiously, lest his self-respect should suffer, which was
why she had passed on the task to a man she had confidence in, and had
so feared the coroner would force a revelation from her.

"You don't wish to vex me?" she said.

"No," said the man, still with a trace of petulance. "That is the last
thing I would like to do; but if you ever want ten pounds when you
haven't got them I wish you would come to me. You see, it really isn't
flattering to me that you would sooner borrow from Tom, Dick, and Harry,
and it sets the confounded idiots talking."

A faint light crept into Violet Wayne's eyes, and Tony knew he had gone
far enough.

"The one thing I resent is that it apparently sets you thinking," she
said. "I can't be satisfied with less than I offer you, Tony, and the
man who loves me must believe in me implicitly. I did not get angry when
you would not share your troubles with me."

Tony softened. "I'm sorry, Violet, but the fact is I don't feel very
pleased about anything to-night. Nobody could expect it!"

"Is it Davidson's death that is troubling you?"

She looked at him with a curious intentness, for Tony's face was
haggard, and a horrible fear came upon the man as she did so. Her gaze
disconcerted him, and he fancied he saw suspicion in it. Accordingly he
clutched at the first excuse that presented itself.

"Not altogether! It's Bernard," he said.

Another irretrievable step was taken. Tony had waited as usual for
events, instead of choosing a path to be adhered to in spite of them. As
the result he was forced into one by which he had not meant to go, and
it led rapidly down hill. Violet Wayne, however, straightened herself a
trifle in her chair.

"Tony," she said, "it is quite impossible that you should think what
your words suggest."

The man's face flushed, for her quiet assurance stirred the bitterness
of jealousy that had hitherto lain dormant in him, and again he answered
without reflection, eager only to justify himself.

"When a man borrows money, and goes out at night to meet another who may
have been blackmailing him, and then disappears when that man is found
dead with marks of violence on him, what would anybody think?" he said.

"Blackmailing him!" said Violet Wayne, and then sat very still a moment
while the blood crept into her pale cheek, for the meaning of one or two
vague allusions she had heard concerning Lucy Davidson flashed upon her.

"It slipped out. Of course, I should not have mentioned it to you."

"You have done so, but the thing is so utterly hateful that it carries
its refutation with it"; and there was a portentous sparkle in the
girl's eyes as she fixed them upon him.

Tony saw it, and trembled inwardly. He had been favored with glimpses of
Violet Wayne's inner self before, and could discern the difference
between a becoming prudery and actual abhorrence.

"Still," he said slowly, realizing that he was committed, "he
disappeared. Of course, the affair may not be as black as it looks, and
perhaps he was driven into it. Men with really good intentions are
forced into doing what they never meant to now and then."

Violet Wayne laughed a little scornful laugh. "Isn't the cowardice which
leads a man into meanness he is ashamed of more contemptible than bold
iniquity?"

"Well," said Tony, "I don't quite know. I don't worry over those
questions, but it seems to me there is something to be said for the man
who does what he shouldn't when he can't help it."

"Can't help it?"

"Yes," said Tony. "I mean when it would only cause trouble to everybody
if he did the correct thing."

The girl looked at him curiously. "I think we had better abandon that
subject, Tony," she said. "We will go back to the other. Your friend
could have had no hand in Davidson's death--because he is your friend,
and because I know what kind of man he is. Is there nothing you could do
to clear him?"

Tony shook his head. "No; I wish I could," he said.

"Still, you see, it doesn't matter quite so much in his case. He leaves
nobody to worry about it behind him, and had no prospects. He told me he
was going out to try his fortune in another land, anyway."

"It doesn't matter! Is it nothing that he should go out with a brand of
that kind upon him?"

"Well," said Tony reflectively, "I really don't think it counts for very
much where he is going to. You see, they are not remarkably particular
in America."

Violet Wayne rose. "You are not in a pleasant mood tonight, Tony, and I
am tired. We will not stay here and vex each other."

Tony endeavored to slip his arm about her. "I know I'm a bad-tempered
beast now and then. I can only tell you that you are ever so much too
good for me again."

The girl did very little to repulse him, in fact scarcely more than lift
her eyes, but Tony's arm fell to his side. Then she smiled somewhat
curiously. "Don't make too determined an effort to convince me," she
said. "I should not like to believe you."

She went out, leaving Tony alone with a horror of himself. He realized
that there could be no turning back now. He must go on by the path he
had taken, and standing with hand clenched on the mantle he groaned a
little.




V -- APPLEBY MAKES A FRIEND


IT was blowing a moderate gale, and the "Aurania," steaming at full
speed into it, rolled viciously. A half-moon shone out low down beneath
wisps of whirling cloud, and the big black seas shook their frothing
crests high aloft against the silvery light as they swept in long
succession out of the night. The steamer met them with dipping
forecastle from which the spray blew aft in clouds, lurched and hove her
streaming bows high above the froth, rolled until one rail seemed level
with the sea, and slid down into the hollow, out of which her head swung
slowly up to meet the onslaught of the next. Bitter spray was flying
everywhere, her decks ran water; but it was only between foremast and
forecastle head she shipped it in cascades, and little groups of
passengers stood where they could find shelter. They had finished their
dinner with some difficulty, and because the vessel rolled so that it
was not an easy task to keep one's seat or footing had found their
attempts to amuse themselves below a waste of effort.

Bernard Appleby stood a little apart from one group of them under the
lee of a deck-house. Tony had lent him fifty pounds, and he had taken
the cheapest berth obtainable which would permit him to travel saloon.
This was apparently a reckless extravagance, but Appleby had inherited a
certain shrewdness from his father, who had risen from the ranks, and
decided that the risk was warranted. He would, he told himself,
certainly make acquaintances, and possibly a friend, during the passage,
while he knew that the majority of those who travelled by those vessels
were Americans who had acquired a competence by commerce, and could
therefore direct him how to find an opening for his energies if they
felt inclined. He had already made the acquaintance of five or six of
them, and acquired a good deal of information about the great Republic,
which did not, however, promise to be of much use to him.

Still, he was by no means dejected. Bernard Appleby had a good courage,
and there was in him a longing for adventure which he had hitherto held
in check. He knew that the gates of the old life were closed against
him, but this caused him no regret, for he had not the least desire to
go back to it. Indeed, he wondered how he had borne the monotonous
drudgery he detested, and practised an almost Spartan self-denial so
long, and it was with a curious content he looked forward into the night
over the plunging bows. The throb of hard-driven engines, roar of wind,
and crash of shattered seas that fell back seething from the forecastle,
stirred the blood in him. It all spoke of stress and effort, but there
was a suggestion of triumph in it, for while the white-crested phalanxes
arrayed themselves against her the great ship that man had made went on,
battered and streaming, but irresistible. Appleby felt that there were
in him capacities for effort and endurance equal to those of other men
who had fought their way to fortune, if he could find a field for them.

Then he became interested in his companions. There were two women among
them, and he could see the figure of one silhouetted against the blue
and silver of the night when the steamer rolled. It was a dainty figure
in spite of the big cape that fluttered about it; while the loose wisps
of hair that blew out from under the little cap in no way detracted from
the piquancy of the half-seen face and head. Appleby recognized the girl
as Miss Nettie Harding, whom he sat opposite to at the saloon table.

"Keep a good hold, Miss Harding!" said one of the men beside her. "This
boat is trying to roll her funnels out of her, and it seems to me quite
possible for one to pitch right over the rail."

The girl's laugh reached Appleby through the roar of the gale, as she
stood, poised lightly, with one hand on the guardrail that ran along the
deck-house, and the deck slanting like a roof beneath her, while the
white chaos of a shattered sea swirled by, as it seemed, directly
beneath her. Then she fell against the deck-house as the steamer rolled
back again until her streaming plates on that side were high above the
brine, and a woman said, "Can't you be careful, Nettie?"

There was a crash beneath the dipping bows, a great cloud of spray
whirled up, and a man's voice said: "Hold on, everybody! She has gone
slap into an extra big one."

There was a few seconds interval while the wet deck rose up before the
roll began, and then the "Aurania" swung back with a vicious jerk.
Appleby heard a faint cry, and saw Miss Harding reel away from the deck-
house. The sea lay apparently straight beneath her, with the steamer's
slanted rail a foot or two above it. Almost simultaneously he sprang,
and felt the girl's shoulder under his hand. How he span her round and
thrust himself behind her he did not know, but next moment he struck the
rail a heavy blow, and the girl crushed him against it. He afterwards
decided that they could scarcely have fallen over it; but that fact was
not apparent just then, and flinging himself on hands and knees he
dragged the girl down with him. As he did so two of her companions came
sliding down to their assistance, and the four glissaded back to the
deck-house amidst several inches of very cold water as the following
roll began. Appleby helped Miss Harding to her feet, and into the
lighted companion, where she turned to him, flushed, gasping, and
dripping, with a grateful smile.

"That was awfully good of you," she said. "I should have been hurt
against the rail, anyway, if you hadn't got in front of me. But your
face is bleeding. I hope I didn't hurt you."

Appleby said he was not hurt in the least, though his shoulder felt
unpleasantly sore; and leaving her with an elder lady who came in with
the rest he hastened to his state-room, where he struggled into dry
clothing, an operation which is not altogether simple on board a rolling
steamer. There was also a lacerated bruise on his forehead which
required some little attention, and while he was occupied with it a man
who tapped upon the door came in. He was apparently of middle age, and
had a shrewd, lean face, with blue eyes that had a twinkle in them. He
sat down and waited until Appleby turned to him. Then he held out a
card.

"I guess you will know my name, but there's my address. Put it in your
wallet," he said.

"Mr. Cyrus P. Harding," said Appleby. "What can I do for you?"

The man laughed pleasantly. "That is rather what I should ask you.
Anyway, I want to thank you for the help you rendered my daughter."

Appleby made a little whimsical gesture. "The conventional answer fits
the case. It was nothing, sir."

"Well," said Harding dryly, "it would have been a good deal to me if my
girl had gone out over the rail."

"I don't think that could have happened."

Harding nodded, but the twinkle snowed more plainly in his eyes. "I
don't either, but I guess you were not quite sure of it then, and there
are men who would have made the most of the thing. I understand you got
between her and the rail, anyway, and that is what gave you the bruise
on the head."

"I'm glad I had so much sense. I have, however, had more serious
bruises, and may get them again. I hope Miss Harding is none the worse."

"No," said Harding. "She seems quite pleased with herself. It's an
adventure, and she likes them. She will thank you to-morrow, and I don't
want to intrude on you. Still, you haven't told me what to call you, and
I hope to see more of you."

Appleby was a young man, and the fall against the rail had shaken him,
or his answer would have been more prompt and decided.

"Walthew Broughton," he said.

Harding, he fancied, looked at him curiously, and then smiled as he went
out; but there was a trifle more color than usual in Appleby's face when
he took up the card. It bore a business address in New York, but there
was written across it, apparently in haste, "Sonoma, Glenwood, Hudson
River."

"I wonder if that has any special significance," he said. "I will not
force myself upon the man, but it's quite evident I can't afford to
stand off if he means to be friendly."

He met Miss Harding on deck next morning, and she graciously allowed him
to find her a chair, pack her wraps about her, and then sit close by
talking to her for half an hour, which he had cause for surmising
excited the indignation of other passengers. He found her vivacious,
witty, and almost astonishingly well-informed, for Nettie Harding had
enjoyed all the advantages the great Republic offers its daughters, and
these are many. Still, he knew that it is a mistake to overdo anything,
and, though Miss Harding still appeared contented with his company, took
himself away when two or three of her feminine companions appeared. They
had questions to ask and Nettie Harding laughed.

"Then the Englishman can talk?" said one.

"Yes," said Nettie Harding reflectively, "he can. Still, he's sensible,
and doesn't say too much. I'm rather fond of those quiet men. There was
another point that pleased me. He didn't hang about where he would be
sure to meet me, and then appear astonished when what he expected
happened, as some men would have done, but waited until I walked up to
him."

"After all, he only picked you up off the deck. There was really no
danger; and I would like to have kodaked you holding on to each other.
In daylight it would have made quite an amusing picture."

"Anyway, I must have hurt him, because he put himself between the rail
and me," said Nettie Harding. "You see, I do weigh something, though I'm
a good deal lighter than you are, Miriam."

Miriam, whose proportions were not exactly sylph-like, appeared slightly
nettled, but the others laughed.

"He is quite good-looking," said one of them. "Now, such a send-off
would make a good beginning for a romance. Quite sure you don't mean to
fall in love with him, Nettie? No doubt he's poor but distinguished, or
he wouldn't be coming out to us."

Miss Harding smiled, but there was a trace of softness in her eyes,
which were of a fine deep tint of blue. "I don't think so, and there is
a difficulty. I'm in love already--with the man I'm going to marry."

A girl who had not spoken nodded sympathetically, for she knew the story
of Nettie Harding's engagement to an officer of the United States navy
who was far from rich.

"This year--next year, Nettie?" she said.

Miss Harding smiled a little. "This one's nearly through, and I'm going
to Cuba early in the next."

"Cuba can't be a nice place just now, with the patriots and filibusters
running loose all over it," said the girl called Miriam. "What do you
want to go there for?"

"My father's going. He has a good many dollars planted out there, and I
fancy he is getting anxious about them. I quite often go round with him;
and Julian will be away in the Bering Sea."

She rose, for a cold wind still swept the sun-flecked Atlantic; but she
spoke to Appleby at lunch, and also at dinner that evening, after which
her father carried him off to the smoking-room. There was a considerable
difference between their ages and views of life, but a friendship that
was free alike from patronage or presumption sprang up between them in
spite of it. Cyrus Harding was an American, and what is usually termed a
self-made man, but he did not attempt to force his belief in himself and
his country upon everybody else, though it was sincere enough. He was
typically lean in face and frame, but his dress was as unostentatious as
his speech, and he wore no diamonds, which are, indeed, not usually
displayed by men of substance in his country. The little glint in his
keen blue eyes, together with the formation of his mouth and chin,
however, hinted that he possessed a good deal of character.

Being a man who noticed everything, he was quite aware that Appleby
spent at least an hour in the aggregate in his daughter's company every
day, and said nothing. Nettie was, he knew, a very capable young woman,
and Appleby, he fancied, a gentleman, which was, in the meanwhile,
sufficient for him. A friendship may also be made rapidly at sea, and on
the seventh day out he asked Appleby a question. They were leaning on
the rail together cigar in hand while the ship rolling her mastheads
athwart the blue swung with an easy lurch over the long smooth heave of
shining sea.

"What is bringing you out to our country?" he said.

Appleby laughed. "What I expect is quite the usual thing. The difficulty
of getting a living in the old one."

Harding looked him over. "Army too expensive?"

Appleby flushed a little. "I have never been in it, though I think I was
meant for a soldier."

"One can't always be what he was meant for," said Harding, with a little
dry smile. "It's a general belief among young men in my country that
they were specially designed for millionaires, but only a few of them
get there. Got any dollars?"

Appleby made a calculation. "Taking the rate at 4.80, I have about one
hundred and twenty."

He had expected his companion to show signs of astonishment at his
rashness, but Harding nodded. "I began with five but I was younger than
you are," he said. "Business pays best yonder. What are you strongest
at?"

"I can ride and shoot a little, which is what seems most likely to
further my intentions, and speak Spanish reasonably well. These, I
surmise, are very doubtful advantages, but I have no liking for business
whatever. Is there anything to be made out of horses or cattle?"

"Oh yes," said Harding dryly. "There are men who make a good deal, but
you want ten or fifteen thousand dollars to begin with, anyway. It's
only a big ranch that pays. Quite sure you wouldn't like to try your
hand at business? I could introduce you to one or two men if you came
out to Glenwood and stayed a week with me."

Appleby felt that the keen blue eyes were quietly scrutinizing him.
"No," he said. "There is a fact I must mention which I also think would
prevent you wishing to entertain me. A business man hiring anybody would
have questions to ask, and I left the old country suddenly. I am not
sure that a charge of manslaughter has not been brought against me by
this time."

Harding did not seem in the least astonished; in fact, his very
impassiveness had its humorous aspect, as Appleby recognized.

"Did you kill the man?" he asked.

"No," said Appleby, "I did not even attempt it; though in the face of
circumstances I think nobody would believe me. Still, that's a story I
can't go into, though it seemed the correct thing to mention it to you."

Harding nodded gravely. "The straight road is the shortest one, though
it's quite often steep," he said. "Now, I had a notion you had some
difficulty of that kind."

"I don't know that there is anything in my appearance which especially
suggests the criminal."

"Well," said Harding, with a little laugh, "you didn't seem quite sure
of your own name when you told it me; but I've handled a good many men
in my time, and found out how to grade them before I began. I wasn't
very often wrong. Now, it seemed to me there was no particular meanness
about you, and homicide isn't thought such a serious thing in my
country, when it's necessary. Before I was your age I had to hold on to
all I had in the world with the pistol one night down in New Mexico--and
I held on."

His face grew a trifle grim, but Appleby was glancing out towards the
saffron glare of sunset on the ocean's rim. "I want to live in the open,
and see what the life men lead outside your cities is like," he said.
"There is nobody to worry about me, and I don't mind the risks. Can you
suggest anything with a chance of dollars in it a little outside the
beaten track?"

"You speak Spanish?"

"I was born at Gibraltar, and lived in Spain until I was ten years old."

"Well," said Harding, "as it happens, I can suggest something that might
suit you, though I would rather, in spite of what you told me, have
found you a business opportunity. The men who play the game will want
good nerves, but there are dollars in it for the right ones. It's
running arms to Cuba."

A little gleam crept into Appleby's eyes, and he flung up his head. "I
think," he said quietly, "that is the very thing I would have wished
for."

"Then," said Harding, "I'll give you a letter to some friends of mine in
Texas."

He went away by and by, and Appleby decided that the cost of his saloon
passage had been a good investment. Still, he wondered what Harding
could have to do with such a risky business as he surmised the smuggling
of arms into Cuba must be, until he strolled round the deck with his
daughter in the moonlight that evening.

"I think you have made a useful friend to-day," she said.

Appleby looked at her with a little astonishment, and the girl smiled
when he said, "I don't understand."

"I mean Cyrus P. Harding. There are quite a number of men with dollars
anxious to be on good terms with him."

"What have I done to please him?"

"You wouldn't come to Glenwood," and the girl laughed again. "No, I
don't mean that exactly, but I need not explain. Cyrus P. Harding never
did a mean thing in his life, you see."

Appleby smiled at her. "So one would surmise. In my country we rather
believe in heredity."

"Pshaw!" said the girl. "There really isn't much in compliments when
they're served out all round. But if you are going to Cuba I may see you
there."

"Will you be in Cuba?"

Nettie Harding nodded. "My father has no end of dollars there--in tobacco
and sugar."

"I wonder if one could ask what induced Mr. Harding to invest money in
such an unsettled country as Cuba is just now?"

Nettie Harding looked up at him confidentially. "It's a thing I wouldn't
tell everybody, and if I did I shouldn't be believed," she said. "Well,
Cyrus Harding can see ever so far ahead, and I never knew him mistaken
yet. Some day something will happen in Cuba that will give us an excuse
for turning the Spaniards out and straightening things up. They need
it."

"But if the thing doesn't happen?"

Nettie Harding laughed. "Then I shouldn't wonder if he and a few other
men made it."

Some of her companions joined them, and she said nothing more to
Appleby; but they met again that evening, and she induced him to promise
that he would spend at least one day at Glenwood, while when they
disembarked in New York Harding walked down the gangway with his hand on
Appleby's shoulder as though on excellent terms with him. He also kept
him in conversation during the Customs searching, and when a little
unobtrusive man sauntered by said to the officer, "Can't you go through
this gentleman's baggage next? He is coming to Glenwood with me."

The unobtrusive man drew a little nearer, glancing at Appleby, and then
touched Harding's shoulder.

"Is that gentleman a friend of yours, Mr. Harding?" he asked.

"Of course," said Harding. "He is staying with me. We have business on
hand we couldn't fix up at sea."

Appleby caught his warning glance, and stood very still with his heart
thumping, apparently gazing at something across the shed, go that the
man could only see the back of his head.

"In that case, I guess I'm wasting time," said the man, who laughed.
"Still, you understand we have to take precautions, Mr. Harding."

He went away, and Appleby turned to Harding with a little flush in his
face as he asked, "Who is that man?"

"That," said Harding, with a dry smile, "is one of the smartest of our
New York detectives."

They reached his house at Glenwood that afternoon, and Appleby spent two
pleasant days there. On the third he left for New York, and Nettie
Harding smiled as she shook hands with him.

"I wonder whether we shall see you in Cuba?" she said.

"It will not be my fault if you do not," said Appleby. "I am heavily
indebted to you and your father."

As it happened, he afterwards saw Nettie Harding in Cuba, and paid his
debt; for Appleby, who had gone out under a cloud that Tony's sweetheart
might retain her faith in him, was one of the men who do not take the
kindness that is offered them and immediately forget.




VI -- THE SCHOONER "VENTURA"


THE night was considerably clearer than anybody on board her desired
when the schooner "Ventura" headed for the land. It rose in places,
black and sharp against the velvety indigo, over her dipping bows,
though most of the low littoral was wrapped in obscurity. Harper, the
American skipper, leaned upon the helm watching the growing brightness
in the east, and a man whose white garments cut against the dusky sea
sat upon the rail close beside him. They were both anxious, for there
were no lights on that strip of Cuban coast, and the "Ventura" had
drifted with the stream in a calm which had complicated Harper's
reckoning. He had to find a certain reef-studded bay, and run the
schooner into a creek among the mangroves without being seen by the
gunboat which he had reason to surmise was looking out for him.

Forward, a cluster of men were sitting about the windlass and leaning on
the rail. They were of diverse nationality and doubtful character--
American, Castilian, and African by extraction, though in the case of
some of uncertain color it would have been difficult to decide which
blood predominated in their veins. It was their task to supply the
insurgents with the munitions of war, and they undertook it
dispassionately, without any patriotic convictions, for the dollars it
would bring. Indeed, most of them were not held in much esteem in the
countries they belonged to, or they would not in all probability have
been there on board the "Ventura."

Appleby watched them languidly from where he sat behind the wheel, and
wondered what lay before him when he glanced towards the dusky coast-
line. He was, however, not unduly anxious, for he had cut himself adrift
from the cramped life he had led, and as yet found the new one pleasant.
It needed qualities he felt he possessed, and which, indeed, he had with
difficulty held in due subjection in England; while the fact that it
might at any time terminate suddenly caused him no great concern. In the
meanwhile the risks and opportunities attached to it had their charm for
one who had long found poverty and the restraints of conventionality
irksome.

"We'll have the moon up in ten minutes," said Harper, as the "Ventura"
swung up on a frothing sea. "That would suit us if we were in the bay,
but I'm not certain where we're heading for just now. You still think
that was Sparto Point we saw at dusk, Rosendo?"

The man who sat upon the rail shook his head. "Who knows!" he said. "If
she is not the Sparto she may be the Playa Santiago, or the Cameron."

Harper turned to Appleby with a little gesture of resignation. "You hear
him. He's talking," he said. "Thirty miles more or less don't count with
them. If we don't get in to-day, we may to-morrow, and if it's next week
nobody's going to worry. They've nice business-like notions in their
country."

Rosendo laughed. "We not find the Sparto? Good! It is simple. She is
farther on. We find her in two or three more hour."

"Oh yes!" said Harper. "Still, what I want to know is, what's going to
happen if the gunboat comes along while we're looking for her? I've a
notion it might mean a white wall and a firing party."

Rosendo shrugged his shoulders, and Appleby glanced towards the east.
There was a bank of cloud in that quarter, but the sky above it was a
pale luminescent blue. Then he looked astern, and saw the white tops of
the seas heave against the darkness, for it was blowing fresh from the
north. The "Ventura," rolling lazily, was running before it with only
her boom-foresail and two jibs set, but now and then the crest of a sea
that surged past lapped her rail.

"Wouldn't she stand more sail?" he said.

"Oh yes!" said Harper, pointing to the mainsail which lay loose beneath
the big boom that swung, banging a little, above them. "It's there
ready. Still, it will be 'most three hours yet before there's water in,
and if the gunboat came along I'd sooner be here, where I've room to
run, than jammed right up between her and a lee shore. If I was sure
that was the high ground behind Point Sparto I'd feel considerably
happier."

They rolled on awhile, and then a half-moon sailed up. The sea changed
to flashing silver, and Harper, leaving the wheel to Rosendo, went up
the foremast hoops and swung perched on the cross-trees, black against
the night. He came down by and by, and there was relief in his voice.

"That's the Point sure enough! We'll have the mainsail on her, boys," he
said.

The men came aft in haste. There was a rattle of blocks, and Appleby
bent his back among the rest, while the folds of dusky canvas rose
thrashing up the mast. They swelled into shape and became at rest, while
the schooner, slanting over suddenly, put on speed, and drove away
towards the land with a great frothing beneath her rail. She rolled
little now, but there was a thud when her bows went down and the spray
whirled half the height of her foresail. Appleby felt the exhilaration
of swift motion, and his pulses throbbed a trifle faster as he watched
the great breadths of canvas that gleamed silver now sway athwart the
blue, and the froth swirl past the slender strip of hull that was
dwarfed by comparison beneath them. The "Ventura" was very fast, but she
could not compete with steam; and he noticed that Harper, who had taken
the helm again, every now and then glanced over the rail. He appeared to
be staring persistently towards one quarter of the horizon.

Suddenly a man standing high on the cross-trees shouted, and Appleby,
springing to his feet, saw a faint, dusky smear drift athwart the blue
and silver, where a minute earlier there had only been sky and water.

"Smoke!" said Harper. "I don't know that it's the 'Ensenada,' but I'm
taking no chances of meeting her, We'll have the gaff-topsails up, boys,
and the foresail over."

He pulled at the wheel. There was a bang as the boom-foresail lurched
over, so that it and the big mainsail now swelled on either hand. Then
the men swarmed about the deck again, and Appleby wondered a little when
amidst a clatter of blocks two more strips of sail went thrashing aloft,
for it seemed to him that the "Ventura" was already carrying a risky
press of canvas. He, however, pulled among the rest, and it was not
until the schooner was clothed with canvas to her topmast heads that he
straightened his back and looked about him. As he did so she dipped her
bows into a sea, and a cascade poured in forward. It came aft frothing
when her head went up, and then as she plunged into the hollow another
mass of foam came up astern and surged by a foot above her rail. Harper
laughed.

"Wet feet don't count in this trade," he said. "She's not going to scoop
in too much of it if I can keep her running, but you'll see something
very like chaos if we have to put her on the wind. Is that smoke rising
any?"

Appleby fancied it was, for the dusky smear had lengthened, and it
seemed to him there was something more solid than vapor in the midst of
it. The skipper, however, in view of the inadvisability of bringing the
great mainsail crashing over, could not turn his head.

"Still, even if it is a gunboat, we should be well in with the land
before she overhauls us," said Appleby.

"Yes," said Harper grimly. "The trouble is there's no water yet into the
creek, and there'll be a blame nasty surf running into the bay. Still,
there's a place where we could hold her to it with two anchors down, and
it would take good eyes to make us out against the land. It's just a
question whether those fellows yonder see us first."

It appeared to Appleby a somewhat important one, but he had to wait for
the answer with the rest, and by and by it came. The man on the cross-
trees shouted, the smear of smoke seemed to break in two, as though the
vessel beneath it had changed her direction, and she became visible in a
moment or two, a faint dark blur upon the moonlit water. Harper turned
his head swiftly, and his face showed very grim in the moonlight when he
stared in front of him again.

"I guess our chances have gone down fifty cents in the dollar," he said.
"Get a range of cable up on deck. Then we'll have the boat cleared handy
and the hatch-wedges out."

The men became busy amidst a rattle of chain, and then stood where it
was a little dryer between the masts, with their shadows lying black
upon the silvery cloths of the foresail. They were watching the steamer,
which was rising upon one quarter with the smear of smoke blowing away
from her. Appleby could see her plainly now, a strip of black hull that
rolled with slanted spars across the harmonies of blue and silver--and
she seemed to him portentous in her shadowiness, for there was no blink
of light on board her.

"The 'Ensenada'?" said Harper.

"Si, senor!" said Rosendo, with a little gesture which was very
expressive.

Harper pulled at the wheel, and Appleby saw that he was addressing him.

"There are two of their gunboats on this coast, and it's quite in the
usual course that it's the one I don't want to see that turns up," he
said. "Her commander has a little grievance against me."

Appleby did not ask him what it was. He had something else to think of,
and the swift upward lurches and wisps of spray that blew about the
"Ventura" made conversation difficult. The seas also seemed to be
growing steeper as she closed with the land, and washed in as they went
smoking past. Still, but for that sinister shape steadily rising higher
on one quarter he could have found pleasure in the scene. The wail of
wind, the humming of the shrouds, patter of spray, and roar of frothy
seas stirred the blood in him, while the swift reeling rush when the
bows went up brought him a curious sense of exultation.

It was stress and effort of muscle and body he had hungered for in the
sleepy English town, for slow endurance was nothing new to him, and he
was apparently to get it now. There was a meaning in the tense black
figures of the men, and the grim impassiveness of Harper's face as he
stiffened his grasp on the wheel, for human fibre was under strain as
well as hemp and wood and metal, which groaned under the pressure which
racked them to the uttermost limit. Yet while the gunboat crept up
astern Appleby felt at home, as though this was not a novel sensation,
and he had been through it all, or something very similar, more than
once before. The fixed look in the eyes that gleamed in the moonlight,
the set faces, and the rigidity of the men's pose appeared in a curious
fashion familiar.

A flash from the steamer roused him, there was a detonation, and a
quarter of a mile beyond them a little white cloud rose from the sea.
Some of the black figures swung round, but Appleby looked straight in
front of him. He did not know why he avoided any abrupt movement, but he
felt without reflection that it was incumbent on him. It was, however,
not the first time a man of his or his mother's name had stood outwardly
unmoved, at least, under artillery fire.

There was also something to see ahead--a dim, forest-shrouded littoral
across which the vapors were streaming, and a faint white line of beach.
In the foreground were broad streaks of froth, and the long blur of a
jutting point with a yeasty seething about the end of it. Away on the
other hand lay a smear of dusky trees, and the gap between them and the
point was, he surmised, the bay they had been looking for. It held no
shelter for them that he could see. Then Harper called the Spaniard
Rosendo.

"There's not going to be water in for an hour yet, anyway," he said.

Rosendo shook his head. "There is much tree on the Point," he said.

Harper appeared reflective. "Yes," he said, "that's what I was thinking.
Well, with this wind the Point would break the sea, and she mightn't
bump the bottom out of her if we did put her on the bar. Those fellows
couldn't get a clear shot at us across the trees, and they wouldn't be
anxious to send boats in considering the sea that's running. Still,
there's a thing that's worrying me."

He glanced forward towards one of the streaks of froth which Appleby
surmised showed where a reef lay below, and Rosendo made an expressive
grimace.

"Los Dientes!" he said, and spread his arms out as though to indicate a
measure. "One brazo a half now."

Harper nodded. "I can't run for the gut behind it without bringing that
fellow too close," he said. "If I go round to weather we'll have to
close-haul her, and he'd come up near enough to sink us if we took sail
off her. Still, she'll scarcely carry what she has got now on the wind."

Rosendo shrugged his shoulders as he said in Castilian, "Between the
fire and the cooking pot there is not much choice, my friend!"

Then the men between the masts came aft together, and one of them, whose
color was not exactly white, stopped in front of Harper.

"We have no use for being run slap on the Dientes, and she's not going
to work off it if we hold on much longer."

Harper swung a hand up commandingly. "When I'm not fit to sail this boat
I'll ask your help," he said. "I've a good deal less use for showing the
Spaniard just what I mean to do while he could spoil my hand by altering
his course a point or two. Get your boom-foresail over, and the staysail
on to her!"

It was done, though the "Ventura" rolled her rail in when the big sail
swung banging over. By and by Harper brought the wind abeam, and she
drove along at an angle to her previous course, with one side hove high,
while the sea came in in cataracts over either bow. Appleby clutched the
rail, for the deck slanted away beneath him, and he wondered how the
barefooted men kept their footing. The other rail was apparently level
with the sea, and the brine that sluiced down the incline washed knee-
deep inside it. The masts sloped as the deck did, with the spray beating
like grapeshot into the foresail between them; but the topmasts above
them slanted further, and Appleby understood why Harper's face was
anxious when he glanced aloft. The gunboat was within easy range now,
and it was evident there would be no escape for them if anything yielded
under the strain. In fact, Appleby was wondering whether her commander
felt sure of them since he was not firing, when there was another flash
followed by the roar of a gun. An unseen object that could be heard
through the sound of wind and sea passed between the masts, and Harper
nodded.

"I guess that decides the thing. What she can't carry she'll have to
drag," he said.

She dragged it for another five minutes, staggering under a press of
sail, and then there was a crash aloft, and topmast and mainsail gaff
fell to leeward together. A clamor of voices went up, and the
"Ventura's" bows swung round a little further off the wind; while
Appleby, who saw Harper's face in the moonlight, noticed that it was set
and very grim.

"You can run down the staysail and outer jib so she'll not fall to
leeward all at once," he said.

The men went forward floundering amidst the spray, and the plunges grew
a trifle easier, while the seas swung the "Ventura" aloft instead of
deluging her; but a glance made the position unpleasantly plain to
Appleby. To leeward lay the white frothing on the Dientes reef, and he
surmised that the "Ventura" could not clear it without her after canvas;
to windward the gunboat, coming down on them rapidly. There was, it
seemed, no escape, and he wondered vaguely what would happen. Harper
said nothing whatever, but stood with his lean figure casting a black
shadow upon the crippled mainsail, grasping the wheel. So they drove on
for another five minutes, and then, with a glance at the gunboat, the
skipper straightened himself.

"They're not going to have the guns, and the schooner might fetch ten
dollars when I'm through with her," he said. "Get the foresail off her,
and stand by to swing out the boat!"

The sail came down thrashing, and the men stood very still and silent
when they had hooked the tackles on the boat. Their faces were turned
forward, and Appleby guessed that they were watching the white upheavals
that showed where the seas rolled across the submerged reef. This was
not astonishing, for the "Ventura's" bows had swung further round, and
it was evident that Harper was running them upon it. Appleby was
sensible of a curious admiration for him. He still stood at the wheel,
slouching over it, now suspense had gone and certainty had come, a most
unimpressive figure, in old duck jacket and brine-soaked trousers that
were both too loose for him, but it was evident that the spirit which
disdains dramatic expression and often burns most clearly in unexpected
places was in him.

"Hold on!" he said quietly as the bows went up.

Then she struck, with a crash that sent two men reeling across her deck,
and the sea that rolled up behind her surged frothing on board. It went
forward waist deep; the "Ventura" lifted, and came down again, with
everything in her rattling and her crew holding fast for their lives.
Then she twisted round, so that the next comber foamed across her and
ground her on the reef, hove herself up, scraped forward, grinding and
groaning, a few more fathoms, and stopped again; while a negro and a
Cuban shaken from their hold rolled down the slanting deck clutching at
each other until they fell into the water pent up by the lower rail. The
din was bewildering, for every block and spar banged and rattled amidst
the dull roar of the seas, but it was rent by the crash of a gun.

Grasping the rail with both hands, Appleby saw the gunboat rolling black
athwart the moonlight, while a smear of vapor broadened about her; but
there was another sound beneath him as he gazed, and while the splinters
flew in showers a great rent opened in the deck. Nobody said anything,
or could have been heard if he had, and Appleby clung tighter still when
once more a sea crested with spouting white came along. It lifted the
"Ventura" up, and then there was a curious quietness as it dropped her
clear of the reef. Through the sudden silence Harper's voice rose evenly
and almost expressionless.

"I guess there's some of the rudder left, though it's jammed. Give me a
hand," he said.

Appleby sprang to help him, and between them they dragged the helm over.
The "Ventura" lurched on more smoothly with a gurgling sound inside her,
for the reef broke the sea; but ten minutes later she struck again, and
remained this time immovable. Nobody waited for orders, and in swift
silence the boat was got over, while a fire commenced to twinkle on the
beach. Wooden cases were passed up from the hold, and--for the water was
smoother there--the boat got away. Four men went in her, and the rest
dropped into the hold, where they tore out boxes and cases and passed
them from man to man. While they worked the gun boomed again, but the
gasping men toiled the more fiercely, and Appleby did his part with
them. He was dripping with perspiration and spray, his hands were
bleeding, and his duck jacket rent up the back, but, gasping and
panting, he labored on with a fierce pleasure that seemed wholly
illogical.

Once he lifted his head above the hatch, as he tore the jacket which
impeded him off his shoulders, and saw that the gunboat had stopped. She
was not firing now, and his comrades had, he fancied, sent three loads
ashore by that time; but he had scarcely glanced at her when Harper saw
him. "Hustle!" he said. "The boats are coming."

How long they toiled in the hold Appleby could never remember, but
though it appeared no more than a few minutes to him the moon had moved
across a broad strip of sky when he crawled on deck again. The boat lay
beneath him, half full of cases, and the men were dropping into her. Two
other boats showed for a moment to windward, and then sank from sight
again.

"Hold on!" said Harper, pointing to the cases still on deck. "Into the
sea with them!"

Appleby and another man threw them over, though there were impatient
cries from the boat below, and the rest were shoving off when they
dropped into her. Somebody was baling furiously, two men tugged and
thrust, Spanish fashion, at every oar, and they reeled away shorewards
with the water lapping into her. Then a fire grew brighter above the
roaring beach, men came floundering waist-deep through the surf, those
in the boat sprang over, and they went up with the wash of a sea.
Appleby, scrambling out of the backwash, stood up, dripping, breathless,
and aching all over, and saw Harper not far away and a host of dusky
figures flitting about the fire. Then there was a flash from seawards, a
crash in the forest behind them, and they disappeared.

"Well," said the skipper quietly, "the 'Ventura' isn't going to sea any
more. You have to take your chances in this business; and we got most of
the inside out of her, anyway."




VII -- THE DESCENT OF SANTA MARTA


A LITTLE fire burned in a hollow of the dusty barranco that fissured the
face of the hill, a clear red fire of the kind that gives little light
and makes no smoke, and its pale glow showed but feebly against the rock
behind. This was still flushed with a warm lustre caught from the
western sky, though the sun had dipped and the fleecy mists were
creeping across the dusky plain below.

A group of weary men lay about the fire, dusty and ragged, for they had
spent most of twelve weary hours forcing a path through thickets and
climbing like goats from rock to rock under the heat of the tropics. Two
of them wore garments of cotton, which hung about them rent by thorns;
three others jackets of American make, looted from a loyalist store; and
one trousers of English tweed, through which his knees protruded, and a
jacket of alpaca of a kind esteemed in Spain. He had, however, a red
silk sash of beautiful texture, which had cost somebody else a good many
dollars, round his waist; and his face, which was bronzed to a coffee
color, had once been of paler complexion than those of most of his
companions. He raised himself a trifle, and glanced about him with a
little whimsical smile.

"They are a choice collection of scarecrows to take a city with," he
said in English.

A man who lay close by looked up with a twinkle in his eyes. "I have
seen smarter soldiers," he drawled. "Still, they're a hard crowd, and
I'd feel kind of sorry for Colonel Morales if his cazadores don't put up
a good fight to-night. What we have on hand isn't quite the thing I came
out to do, but I guess it's better than catching fever down there in the
mangrove swamps. That's how it strikes me, though it will scarcely be
the kind of business you've been used to, Appleby."

Appleby laughed again as he glanced at the ragged men sprawling in
attitudes that were rather easy than picturesque a little farther up the
gorge. They were of various shades of color, from pale Castilian olive
to African jet, and a good many of them were barefooted, while the shoes
of the rest were burst. The arms scattered about them were as curiously
assorted--American Marlin rifles, old English Sniders, Spanish service
weapons, and cutlass-like machetes with a two-foot blade, which proved
as efficient when, as quite frequently happened, there was a difficulty
in obtaining the right kind of cartridges.

They were for the most part men with wrongs, individual as well as
national; for the Spanish system of checking disaffection was sharp and
stern, and the man who has seen brother or comrade butchered to bolster
up an effete authority is apt to remember it. Those who had no wrongs
possessed a lust of plunder which served almost as well as animus; but
there were a few who had been driven to join them by patriotic
convictions. They had already made themselves a terror to the conscript
troops of Spain, as well as peaceful peasants with loyalist sympathies,
who called them the Sin Verguenza--the men without shame. It was not from
choice that Appleby had cast in his lot with them, but because it seemed
to him preferable to falling into the Spaniards' hands. He had, however,
by daring in one encounter, and shrewd counsel, already made himself an
influence, and had been endowed with the rank of Teniente.

"No," he said a trifle dryly, "it is not. When I plundered folks in my
country I did it for other people with a bill, and I had the law behind
me. I was trained to it, you see."

"It's quite a good trade," said Harper, who had joined the Sin Verguenza
because the coast was too strictly watched to leave him any chance of
getting away again. "Kind of pity to let up on it. It was a woman sent
you here?"

Appleby laughed, and then sat silent a moment or two staring straight
before him. The dusty gorge seemed to fade, and he could fancy himself
standing once more at the head of a shadowy stairway in an English hall
looking into a woman's eyes. They were big gray eyes that seemed to read
one's thoughts, set most fittingly in a calm, proud face, above which
clustered red-gold hair, and he had seen them often since that eventful
night, on many a weary march, as well as in his sleep.

"Yes," he said; "but not in the way I think you mean. She was my best
friend's sweetheart, and nothing to me. No doubt she has married him by
now."

Harper's smile seemed to express incredulity, and for the first time a
doubt flashed into his comrade's mind. Would he have done so much for
Tony if the woman had been any one else than Violet Wayne? The question
almost startled him and though he strove to answer it in the affirmative
no conviction came. Tony had been his friend, and until he came to
Northrop he had never seen the girl; while it was, of course,
preposterous to suspect that he had gone out under a cloud for her sake;
and yet the doubt remained to be afterwards grappled with. In the
meanwhile he brushed the question aside as of no moment. Violet Wayne
would marry Tony, and in all probability he had already passed out of
her memory. He was, however, glad when a man with an olive face stood up
beside the fire and glanced at him with a smile.

"Among comrades it is not good courtesy to speak apart, and the English
is a difficult tongue to me," he said in Castilian. "I have apprehended
no more in the Havana than the response discourteous, 'You bedam.'"

Appleby laughed. "I fancy you others can beat us in that line," he said.
"Shall we get in to-night, Maccario?"

The Insurgent captain made a little expressive gesture. "Who knows!" he
said. "They have two companies of cazadores, but there is this in our
favor--they do not expect us. Four days' march--for troops--from Adeje, and
we have come in two! Yes, I think we shall get in, and then there will
be trouble for those others in Santa Marta and the Colonel Morales."

Appleby glanced down the barranco, and saw framed, as it were, in its
rocky gateway the sweep of plain below. The tall green cane and orange
groves had faded to a blur of dusky blueness now, but in one place he
could still discern the pale gleam of white walls. That was Santa Marta,
and he remembered how they had been welcomed there when, weary and dusty
with travel, they had last limped that way. There were no troops in
Santa Marta then, and the Sin Verguenza, who did not know that an
infantry battalion lay close by, had accepted the citizens' hospitality,
and borrowed much less from them than they usually did when their
entertainers had loyalist sympathies. While they slept the deep sleep of
weariness the cazadores fell upon the town, and the Colonel Morales
allowed a very short shrift to those who failed to escape from it.
Therefore Santa Marta was anathema to the Sin Verguenza, and, what was
almost as much to the purpose, it was rich.

While he watched the white walls faded, and the fire in the barranco
grew brighter as darkness closed down. A negro, who removed a kettle
from it, carefully put it out, and served them with a meal, though
Harper sighed disgustedly as he lighted a maize-husk cigarette when he
had consumed his portion.

"Well, I guess we'll get breakfast to-morrow, if we're alive," he said.
"I've lived on some kind of curious things in Cuba, including fricassee
of mule, but onions, bad guavas, and half-ripe mangoes, as a mixture for
fighting on, doesn't suit my taste at all. No, sir. I want to lie down
nice and quiet, and not worry anybody, when I've got dysentery."

His companions, however, did not complain. Perhaps they were accustomed
to scarcity, though the Sin Verguenza lived well when they could do so
at other men's expense; and there is a capacity for patient endurance in
most of the peoples of Spain. They lay smoking cigarettes instead, while
a little cool breeze came down out of the soft darkness that now veiled
the hills above. Beneath them lights twinkled dimly like clustering
fireflies in the misty plain, and once a faint elfin ringing of bugles
came up. The Sin Verguenza answered it with a hoarse murmur, and then
lay still, patiently biding their time.

The dew settled heavily as the rocks grew cooler; Appleby's alpaca
jacket grew clammy, but he lay motionless beside the embers, once more
grappling with the question what was he, an Englishman of education,
doing there? Violet Wayne's eyes seemed to ask it of him reproachfully,
and he could not find a fitting answer. The plea that he was there
because he could not help it did not occur to him, for he was young, and
believed that a determined man can shape his own destiny. Instead, he
admitted vaguely that the reckless life, the testing of his bodily
strength, the close touch with human nature stripped of its veneer, and
the brief taste of command, all appealed to him. This, he knew, was no
defence; but he felt that he at least owed the Sin Verguenza something,
for they had come upon him while he hid from the troops of Spain, and,
finding that he had nothing but his life to part with, had incontinently
given him what they had, which was just then very little.

At last the Captain Maccario rose to his feet and called aloud. There
was a murmur of voices, a clatter of arms, a rattle of stones, and a
patter of feet, and the Sin Verguenza came out from the barranco like
beasts from their lairs. The hillside fell steep beneath them, but they
went down, flitting noiselessly, half-seen shadows, while each man chose
his own path, and not as troops would have done. Here and there the
machetes cleared a way where it would take too long to go round, or
there was a crackle of undergrowth when they plunged into a belt of
trees. Then a mule track led them down to the level, and with a shuffle
of broken boots and soft patter of naked feet they swung along the dusty
carretera road. It wound away before them smelling of dew-cooled earth,
a faint white riband, past the shadowy tobacco and dusky sugar cane, and
there was no stoppage when here and there a flat-roofed house loomed up
beside it. Then there was a murmur of warning, a drowsy "Viva la
libertad!" and the column passed on; for the insurrection had taken
hold, and the enemies of the Sin Verguenza were the men who had
something to lose.

Still, a dozen men with rifles, and cartridges to match, stayed behind
when they filed through a white aldea lying silent amidst the cane, and
the Sin Verguenza swung into slightly quicker stride. If the Colonel
Morales was to be caught at all he must be caught napping, and, as they
knew, he usually slept with one eye open. Still, Appleby fancied it
might be accomplished, for he had discovered already that the Castilian
has a disdain for petty details, and frequently leaves a good deal to
chance.

By degrees the dust grew thicker and the little flat-topped houses more
plentiful, while here and there white haciendas grew into shape among
the trees. There were no lights in any of them; but by and by the Sin
Verguenza stopped where the white orange flowers lay crushed upon the
road and consulted with their guide. The Colonel Morales, they believed,
did not expect them, but it was likely that he had pushed forward a
section or two of cazadores to watch the road. The leaders also argued
softly for some little time, and Appleby listened with his Marlin rifle
under his arm, noticing how the fireflies sparkled in the leaves
meanwhile. There were great stars above him in the sweep of cloudless
indigo, and the low murmur of voices emphasized the stillness, while the
heavy scent of the orange flowers was in his nostrils. Long afterwards a
vision of the long, straggling column waiting in the dim white road
would rise up before him when he breathed that scent.

Then they went on again, by paths that led through tobacco fields and
amidst breast-high cane dripping with the dew that brushed them as they
passed. This was, however, the work the Sin Verguenza were accustomed
to, and no one saw them flit through the misty fields file by file. The
cazadores, on their part, marched with bugles and wagons and loaded
mules; and there was perhaps some excuse for their leader, the Colonel
Morales, who believed the Sin Verguenza to be hiding some ten leagues
away.

They stopped for the last time within sight of the white-walled town,
which lay dark and silent girdled by thin wisps of mist, and the Captain
Maccario spoke to those who could hear him. His words were not eloquent
or especially patriotic, but they were answered by a portentous murmur;
and Appleby surmised that there would be wild work if the Sin Verguenza
sacked the town. He, however, moved forward as he was bidden with his
ragged half-company, realizing that in the meanwhile he was rather going
with than leading them. Where the rest went he could not see, for his
attention was occupied in getting into and out of enclosures
noiselessly, and once he fell into an aloe hedge and pricked himself
grievously. Then he wondered what had happened to the barefooted men,
but none of them at least said anything, and the dim, flitting forms
went on. It all seemed unreal to him--white walls that rose higher,
shadowy figures, and the silence they scarcely disturbed; but once more
he was vaguely conscious that it was curiously familiar.

Then there was no more cover, for they straggled out, not in ranks, but
clusters, from among orange trees and tall, flowering shrubs, which he
fancied by their scent were oleanders, with a bare strip between them
and the flat-topped houses. Santa Marta lay before him scarcely two
hundred yards away, and he felt his heart throb painfully. His guide
whispered something, and Appleby nodded, though he could not remember
what the man had said, and they went forward at a run. The patter of
feet, and clatter of strap and swivel, seemed to swell into a
bewildering din, but they were almost upon the fielato offices, where
the carretera entered the town, before a rifle flashed.

It was answered by a bugle behind them, for it seemed that the cazadores
had watched the road; another rang out in the town. But it was in grim
silence the Sin Verguenza ran, though there were now pale flashes along
the parapet of the flat roofs in front of them. A man--a negro, he
fancied--clutched at Appleby's arm, loosed it, and reeled backwards with
a shrill scream. Another staggered, and Appleby trod on him as he fell
under his feet. He scarcely saw the man, only the white walls that
seemed to come no nearer, though he knew by the way his heart was
thumping that he was running savagely. A curious din was going on,
bugles ringing, the patter of desultory riflery; but he caught the words
of somebody who ran behind him, and cried out breathlessly in Castilian
as he swung up his hand.

Swinging past the fielato offices they swept under a white wall, and
plunged into a shadowy calle, where pale faces peered out at them from
the lattices. They went down it at a run, and would have gained the
broad plaza it led to but that the blast of a volley met them in the
face. Men went down, but not many, for Appleby heard the click of the
bullets on the walls and stones, and surmised that it was conscript
troops shipped off half trained in haste from Spain that fired. He could
dimly see more of them flocking into the calle, and it became evident to
him that his men must go through them.

With a hoarse shout he sprang forward, though he could never remember
whether it was in English or Castilian he cried, and the Sin Verguenza
came on with a roar behind. This was not the kind of fighting they
preferred, but they had the best of reasons for surmising that no mercy
would be shown them if they did not succeed. They were in among the
huddled men before the rifles could flash again, barrel and butt
rattling among the bayonets of those who had found opportunity of fixing
them, and machetes swinging.

Almost to Appleby's astonishment they also went through; and when,
swinging the Marlin rifle by the muzzle, he reeled out into the plaza
the cazadores fled across it like sheep. There was a breathless howl as
they did so, a fresh trampling of feet, and the rest of the Sin
Verguenza poured out from another calle with a half-company of cazadores
retiring before them, and firing as they went. Some of them were less
than half dressed, but they gave back unwillingly, with the spitting of
their rifles showing red against the walls that shut in the shadowy
square.

It seemed to Appleby that if the others rallied and joined them the Sin
Verguenza would have their work cut out, and when one who carried a
sword in place of a rifle made a stand he shouted in Castilian. He spoke
the words that came to him, without reflection; but he was the son of a
ranker, and the grandson of a colonel on his mother's side. There was a
flicker of riflery from the calle where Maccario's men were, but the
officer with the sword was standing still, and men who turned by twos
and threes closing in on him. The first mob of beaten men were also
halting, when Appleby hurled his ragged handful like a wedge in between.

They went in with clubbed rifle and red machete; the officer went down,
and for a few wild, moments cazador and rebel fought hand to hand. Then
the drilled men broke and fled, half of them to meet the other band of
Sin Verguenza pouring from the street, and the rest up the dark calle
that led out of the plaza with Appleby and his followers hard upon their
heels. It was a fierce chase, but a short one, for the cazadores
vanished into a great archway, and streaks of red sparks lighted the
windows above. Appleby glanced over his shoulder and saw the rest of the
ragged column running down the street, and then that some of them were
going down. He had no leisure for reflection, but it was borne in upon
him that if they were to carry Santa Marta it must be accomplished
before the scattered infantry had recovered from the surprise, for he
had seen already that there is very little cowardice amongst the troops
of Spain.

What he said or in which tongue he spoke he did not know, but in another
moment he and a negro with a machete sprang into the smoke of the rifles
that whirled in the archway, and, howling like beasts now, the Sin
Verguenza followed them. Men he could scarcely see broke away before
them, though he fancied some remained and were trampled on; and then
they were in a broad patio with lights shining behind the lattices about
him, and the negro was no longer beside him. A door crashed to in front
of them, pale flashes shone at the windows; but in another moment the
door went down, and they were pressing up a stairway through stinging
smoke, with half-seen men firing down on them. There was dust in the
smoke, and the plaster came raining down until Appleby could scarcely
see anything at all; but the Sin Verguenza went on, and he was borne
forward in front of them when they poured tumultuously out upon a flat
roof at the head of the stairway. Then there was a roar of exultation,
and he dimly saw men in uniform floundering over the low walls that
divided roof from roof, while from other openings there poured out more
of the Sin Verguenza.

Appleby wondered why he could not see them clearly, and then his hearing
also seemed to fail him. He was conscious of a confused shouting in the
street below, but it grew curiously faint, and he staggered clear of the
rest, and, scarcely knowing why he did so, groped his way back to the
patio, where he sat down beside a bush of heliotrope or some other
flower that had a heavy sickly smell. He did not know how long he sat
there feeling cold and faint, but at last somebody shook him and held
something to his lips. He drank, gasped, and saw Harper smiling gravely
down on him.

"I guess you feel better now!" he said.

Appleby blinked at him. "I don't quite know what's the matter with me,
but I feel--dazed," he said. "What are the boys doing?"

Harper gravely felt his head, for Appleby had lost his hat. "Well,
that's not astonishing--and it's a good one," he said. "The whack that
sergeant gave you would 'most have felled a bullock. As to the other
question, the Sin Verguenza have the town. Morales' men hadn't a show at
all, though they might have made a stand if you hadn't kept them on the
hustle. Take another drink."

Appleby drank again, and his scattered senses came back to him. "I don't
seem to remember very much," he said.

"No?" said Harper, with a curious little laugh. "Now it's my business to
get the most out of men, but I haven't seen anything much smarter than
the way you took hold and handled the Sin Verguenza. Say, who taught you
soldiering?"

Appleby stared at him, and then laughed softly when he saw that the man
was perfectly serious.

"I never saw a shot fired at a man in my life until I joined the Sin
Verguenza," he said. "Still, though I don't know that it has anything to
do with the case, most of my folks had their share of fighting, and one
was with the Cristinos in Spain."

Harper shook his head. "Never heard of them," he said. "Anyway, if you
feel fit for walking you had better come along and get some food. I
guess you'll want it, and onions and mangoes don't go very far with me.
This place will be very like the pit with the blast on when the Sin
Verguenza get their work in."




VIII -- APPLEBY'S PRISONER


THE night was pleasantly cool when Cyrus Harding sat with his daughter
and the Colonel Morales on the veranda which ran round the patio of the
"Four Nations" hostelry in Santa Marta. The hotel was, as usual, built
in the shape of a hollow square, and the space enclosed formed a
pleasant lounging place when the only light was furnished by the soft
glow from the latticed windows surrounding it. That night it fell upon
pink-washed walls, clusters of purple Bougainvillea that climbed the
trellis, the white blossoms of a magnolia, and a row of carved pillars,
while the square of indigo above was set with silver stars. It is true
that the stables opened into the patio, as did the kitchen, next door to
them, but that was not unusual, and the curious musky smell that hangs
over most Spanish towns was tempered by the scent of flowers.

Harding lay in a cane chair, with the blue cigar smoke drifting about
him and a little thoughtful smile in his lean face. He was a widower,
and though he now enjoyed a very respectable competence, desired a
fortune to bequeath his daughter, which was why he had sunk good money
in what his friends considered reckless ventures in Cuba. Harding had,
however, taken risks all his life, and knew there is not usually very
much to be made by the business man who follows the beaten track. He
looked further ahead than his fellows, and taking the chances as they
came played for heavier stakes.

His daughter sat a little apart, daintily fresh and cool, in a long
white dress, with the soft light of the lamp above her gleaming on her
hair, which was of warm brown, and emphasizing the little sparkle in her
eyes. The cold of New York did not suit her, and she had accompanied her
father to Cuba before. Opposite Harding, across the little table on
which stood a flask of wine, sat a spare, olive-faced officer, with a
sword girt to his waist. He had keen dark eyes with a hint of sternness
in them, and a straight, thin-lipped mouth; while he was already known
in that country as El Espada, Morales the Sword. His mission was to put
down the insurrection in that district, and the means he employed were
draconic.

"You ask a good many questions, senor," he said in Castilian. "There is
no difficulty with respect to some of them and the information in my
possession is at your service; but it is different with those that
concern the situation political. We are not sure yet who you Americans
sympathize with; and I am, you understand, an officer of Spain."

Harding made a little deferential gesture, but he also smiled. "One can
usually obtain political information of importance in my country--when
one is rich enough," he said, as it were, reflectively. "Of course, one
avoids hurting anybody's feelings, but it seems to me that the best
guarantee we can give of our good will is the fact that some of us are
investing our money here."

Morales shook his head. "It is not quite enough," he said. "There are
men without money in your country, my friend, and it is those who have
nothing that love the revolution. I have also a little affair with two
of your estimable countrymen."

Nettie Harding, who understood him, looked up. "Now," she said, "that is
interesting! You will tell us about it?"

Morales nodded. "It is a month since we marched east with a strong
company and a little machine-gun," he said. "We march by night, and it
is sunrise when we climb the Alturas gorge. Above, three leagues away,
hides a company of the Sin Verguenza, and the Captain Vincente who
marches round will take them in the rear. I have scouts thrown forward,
and we march silently, but by and by the front files come running back
and there is firing in the pass. The Sin Verguenza, it seems, are upon
us, but that is not wise of them. Figure you the place--the rock one
cannot climb above us, a barranco, very deep, below, and the machine-gun
to sweep the track. Pouf! It is swept. The Sin Verguenza melt away, and
we go forward to conclude the affair."

"Well," said Harding a trifle impatiently, "where do the Americans come
in?"

Morales' face grew wicked. "Down the rock, my friend. Perhaps they are
sailors; for where there is no footing for any man they slide down the
lianas, and others follow them. The cazadores do not look above; there
is still firing, and they do not hear me. The Americans are upon the
gun, and more of the Sin Verguenza arrive behind them. I see one
American who is young with his shoulder at the wheel of the gun, and in
another minute it is gone, and there is a crash in the barranco. Then
the Sin Verguenza come back again, and we go home, my friend; but it is
not all my company who come out of Alturas Pass. One waits, however, and
by and by my turn comes."

Nettie Harding said nothing, but there was a significant sparkle in her
blue eyes, while her father's nod was deprecatory.

"They are not friends of mine, and I have a good deal to lose," he said.
"What I want to know is, if you had money to spare would you buy the San
Cristoval hacienda? There should be a profit in it at the price, but not
if the patriots are likely to burn the sugar mill, or the administration
to quarter troops there. You are responsible for this district!"

"Money is very scarce with me, my friend," said Morales dryly.

Harding nodded sympathetically, and dropped his voice to a lower tone.
"One would be content with a little less profit if it meant security,"
he said. "It would pay me to make certain that the hacienda would not be
meddled with--by the Sin Verguenza."

There was a little gleam of comprehension in the officer's eyes, and he
thoughtfully flicked the ash from his cigar. "I think I could promise
that," he said. "We will talk again, senor, but now--if I have your
excuses--I think I will be wanted at the cuartel."

He rose, made Miss Harding a little punctilious inclination, and moved
away, while the lamplight flung his shadow black upon the pink-washed
walls. It seemed to the girl suggestively sinister.

"I do not like that man," she said. "He has wicked eyes, and his face is
cruel!"

Harding laughed. "Anyway, it's evident he has his price, and I think
I'll buy the hacienda, though I'll want a man to run it, since I can't
stay here. He will have to be the right kind of man."

Nettie Harding appeared reflective. "I wonder what has become of Mr.
Broughton whom we met on board the 'Aurania'?" she said.

"The folks I gave him letters to told me he was here in Cuba; but I'm
not quite sure his name was Broughton. He had got himself mixed up in
some kind of trouble in England."

"Then," said the girl decisively, "somebody else made the trouble."

"It's quite likely. I don't think there's any meanness in that man; but
I wouldn't worry about him. It wouldn't please Julian."

The girl laughed. "Julian," she said, "knows me too well to be jealous."

Harding said nothing, and the two sat silent awhile. There were few
guests in the "Four Nations" just then, and only a faint murmur rose
from the plaza beyond the pink-washed walls. Somebody, however, was
singing, and now and then a soft tinkle of guitars came musically
through the stillness with the chorus of the "Campanadas." Nettie
Harding listened vacantly, while glancing up at the blue above she
wondered whether the same clear stars shone down on a certain naval
officer, and if he thought of her as the big warship rolled across the
wastes of the Pacific. It was very still, and cool, and peaceful, and
she lay, languidly content to dream, in the cane chair, until she
straightened herself with a little gasp as the ringing of a rifle came
sudden and portentous out of the darkness. It was followed by a crash of
firing, and Harding looked up sharply.

"Winchesters--but those are Spanish rifles now!" he said. "It seems the
Insurgents must have got in behind the pickets."

"The Insurgents!" said the girl, with a shiver.

Harding rose, and stood looking down upon her curiously grave in face.
"This is a thing I never expected. Morales told me there wasn't a rebel
within ten leagues of us; but he has men enough to whip them off," he
said. "Put on a jacket, Nettie. We can see what is going on from the
roof."

In another minute they stood looking down over the low parapet into the
shadowy plaza. There was not a light in it now, but through the ringing
of the bugles there rose a confused clamor and the patter of running
feet, and Nettie Harding could dimly see clusters of citizens apparently
making the best pace they could towards the calle that led out of Santa
Marta. As she watched a line of figures broke through them and by their
rhythmic tramp she guessed that these were soldiery. Then a fresh mob of
citizens poured into the plaza, and the rifles crashed again.

"What does it mean?" she asked.

Harding, stooping over the parapet, listened a moment to the confused
voices, and then shook his head. "I'm afraid it's the Sin Verguenza
coming," he said. "They have a little account against Santa Marta, and I
wouldn't like to be Morales when they send in the bill."

His attitude betokened strained attention, and the girl fancied he was
endeavoring to ascertain how the troops had fared. Then the clamor grew
suddenly louder, and she grasped his arm.

"Oh!" she said. "They are in the town!"

"Yes," said Harding curtly, "I guess they are. The sooner we leave them
and the Santa Martans to it the better! Get your little trinkets
together, Nettie; I'll have the mules we hired ready inside five
minutes."

He plunged down the stairway, burst through the negroes already
clamoring about the stable, and dragged the mules out. There was a crowd
in the archway leading out of the patio when the girl joined him.

"We can't mount here," he said. "Keep close behind me until we make the
plaza."

It was accomplished with difficulty, but the men who pressed upon them
saw the glinting pistol; and Nettie Harding stood ready to mount in the
plaza when a mob of fugitives surged about them. There was a crash of
riflery very close at hand, the mule plunged, and she reeled backwards
with a little cry. For a moment she felt her father's grasp upon her
shoulder, then the mules seemed to vanish and Harding with them, and she
was driven forward amidst the press. A voice she recognized was shouting
a few yards away, but it ceased suddenly, and she was jostled this way
and that with the little breath she had left almost crushed out of her.
She could only wove as the crowd did, and it bore her onward into a dark
calle, where screaming women were pouring from the doorways, and here
and there a pale light shone down upon the terrified faces about her,
but there was no sign of Harding anywhere.

She could never remember how long this lasted; but by and by the crowd
seemed to melt away where two or three streets branched off from a
smaller plaza, and she stood still, breathless, striving to draw the
thin jacket, whose buttons had been torn away, over the trinkets she had
hastily clasped into her bodice and cast about her neck. Then the
venomous clanging of rifles commenced again, and when something zip-
zapped along the stones and struck the white walls with a curious
splashing sound she turned to run and saw a dusky archway in front of
her. Stumbling into it, she flung back the great leather curtains, and
found herself in a little church. It smelt of stale incense, and a few
pale lights that only intensified the darkness blinked here and there;
but she could hear low rustlings which seemed to indicate that others
had taken refuge in it, and shrank into a corner.

She fancied she spent at least an hour in the church, listening with
apprehension to the clamor that broke out and sank again outside. There
were murmurs inside the building, and an occasional rustling of the
leather curtains, but this told her nothing; and at last, unable to bear
the suspense any longer, she moved softly towards the door. The town was
almost silent when she reached it, and there was a light burning in what
appeared to be a wine shop across the plaza. She could also hear
laughter as well as the tinkle of a guitar; and as this did not indicate
fear she decided to enter the shop and endeavor to hire somebody to
search for her father. Unfortunately, however, she did not remember a
saying common in Spain respecting the fondness of evil-livers for the
sound of church bells.

She flitted across the plaza without molestation, and then stopped in
front of a building which bore a scroll announcing that it was a cafe. A
blaze of light shone out from it, and looking in between the wooden
pillars she could see the little tables and wine barricas. Then she
gasped, for in place of reputable citizens the tables were occupied by
women with powdered faces in cheap bravery and ragged men with rifles
slung behind them. The light also showed her standing white in face with
torn garments and the jewels sparkling at her neck to the revellers; and
a man of dusky skin, with a machete hanging at his belt, sprang up with
a shout.

There was a burst of laughter, and Nettie Harding fled, with the patter
of several pairs of feet growing louder behind her, until two men came
forward to meet her. They, however, let her pass; there was an
altercation, and she stood still, trembling, when a cry in English
reached her. Then she saw three or four dim figures moving back towards
the cafe and the two men coming towards her. One of them also raised a
hand to his big shapeless hat.

"I scarcely think they will trouble you any more," he said in Castilian,
which Nettie could understand.

She said nothing for a moment, but stood still looking at the men, and
wondering whether they could be trusted. She could, however, see very
little of them, and found a difficulty in expressing herself in
Castilian.

"Can you tell me whether the Hotel Cuatro Naciones is safe?" she asked
in faltering English. "I lost my companion leaving it."

"I scarcely think it is," said one of the men, whose accentuation was
unmistakably English. "You were staying there?"

"Yes," said Nettie. "My father was separated from me by the crowd."

One of the men said something she did not hear to his comrade, while
just then a cry of alarm came out of the darkness, and was followed by a
rush of feet. Then the man who had spoken turned to her again.

"I'm afraid you can't stay here," he said, with evident perplexity.

As he spoke a crowd of shadowy men surged about them, but he called out
angrily in Castilian, and before she quite realized what he was doing
drew the girl's hand beneath his arm. Then there was laughter and a
shout: "Excuses, Don Bernardino. Pass on, comrades!"

Nettie would have snatched her hand free, but the man held it fast with
a little warning pressure, and she went on with him, partly because his
voice had been deferential and puzzlingly familiar, and also because it
was evident that she could not get away. They went up a calle, where
another band of roysterers came clamoring to meet them, until the man
led her under an archway where a lamp was burning. Then he gravely
dropped her hand, and Nettie gasped as she stared at him. He was burned
to the color of coffee, his shoes were burst, and his garments, which
had evidently never been intended to fit him, were mostly rags, but his
face reminded her of the man she had met on board the "Aurania."

"It is perhaps not astonishing that you don't seem to recognize me, Miss
Harding," he said. "You have no idea where your father can have gone
to?"

"No," said the girl, with a little tremor of relief. "He must be in the
town, and I would be very grateful if you could take me to him. Of
course, I know you now."

"Is your father Cyrus Harding--Sugar Harding--of New York?" the other man
broke in.

"Yes," said the girl, and the man drew his comrade aside.

"You and I have got to see her through, and your quarters would be the
safest place," he said.

Appleby stared at him as he asked, "Have you taken leave of your senses,
Harper?"

"No," said his companion dryly. "I guess they're where they are of most
use to me. Everybody's entitled to what he can pick up to-night, and
there are not many of the Sin Verguenza would dispute your claim. It's
beginning to strike you?"

"I hope it will not strike Miss Harding too," said Appleby, whose face
flushed. "Still, I can think of nothing else."

Then he went back slowly to where the girl was standing.

"I fancy I can find you shelter if you will trust yourself to me; and
when your father asks any of my men about you they will send him to
you," he said. "It is, however, necessary that you should take my arm."

Nettie flashed a swift glance at him, but the man was regarding her
steadily with gravely sympathetic eyes, and it was with a curious
intuitive confidence she moved away with him. They passed bands of
roysterers and houses with shattered doors, and finally entered a patio
littered with furniture. An olive-faced man with a rifle stood on guard
in it, and the color swept into the girl's face as she saw his grin; but
he let them pass, and Appleby went on, moving stiffly, and very grim in
face, up a stairway that led to a veranda. There he took down a lantern
that hung on a lattice, and gave it the girl as he pointed to a door.

"There is a strong bolt inside," he said in a curiously even voice. "I
do not know of any other place in Santa Marta where you would be as safe
to-night."

Nettie turned with a little shiver, and looked down into the patio.
There were lights behind most of the lattices, and she could hear loud
laughter and the clink of glasses, while here and there ragged figures
with rifles showed up on the veranda. Then she straightened herself with
an effort and looked steadily at Appleby. He stood wearily before her,
very ragged, and very disreputable as far as appearance went, but he did
not avoid her gaze.

"Where am I?" she asked, with a faint tremor in her voice.

"I believe this was the Alcalde's house. It is occupied by the Insurgent
leaders now."

"Then," said the girl, with a little gasp, "why did you bring me here?"

"I can escort you back to the plaza if you wish it," said Appleby
quietly. "Still, you would be running serious risks, and I believe I can
answer for your security here. You see, I am an officer of the Sin
Verguenza."

Nettie gasped again, and once more shot a swift glance at him. Appleby
was standing very still, and save for the weariness in it his face was
expressionless. Then without a word she turned and went into the room,
while Harper smiled softly when he heard the bolt shot home. The room,
she found, was evidently a sleeping chamber, for there was a cheap iron
bedstead in it, and articles of male attire were scattered about the
floor. From the quantity of them, and the manner in which they were
lying, it also appeared that somebody had been endeavoring to ascertain
which would fit him. Then Nettie, remembering the rags the man wore, sat
down somewhat limply with burning cheeks in the single chair, until a
little burst of meaningless laughter that was tinged with hysteria shook
her.

In the meanwhile Appleby dropped into a cane chair further along the
veranda and laid his rifle across his knees. "My head's aching, and I
can't see quite straight," he said. "See if you can get me a little wine
somewhere, Harper. Then you had better go along and find out what those
rascals of mine are after, and if anybody has seen Harding."

Harper shook his head. "I guess I've had 'bout enough of them for one
night, and if any indignant citizen slips a knife into one of them it's
not going to be a great loss to anybody," he said. "You know who that
girl is?"

"Miss Nettie Harding. I met her on the 'Aurania' coming out."

Harper smiled. "Well," he said reflectively, "it's not every day one of
the Sin Verguenza is honored with the custody of a young woman who lives
in one of the smartest houses on the Hudson. It strikes me there's money
in the thing, and I'm going to stop right here, and be handy when Sugar
Harding comes along, though I don't know that he'd think much of me as a
chaperon in this outfit."

"Get me some wine," said Appleby, while the bronze deepened in his
forehead. "I have got to keep awake, and don't feel inclined for any
foolery."

Harper went away chuckling, and Appleby sat still. The blow he had
received in the attack had shaken him, and he had spent that day and
most of the night before it in forced marching. It was some time before
Harper returned, and in the meanwhile the Captain Maccario came up the
stairway. He stopped in front of Appleby, and shrugged his shoulders
expressively.

"The senorita is disdainful, then?" he said.

Appleby devoutly hoped Miss Harding did not understand Castilian, and
attempted no explanation. He had more than a suspicion that it would not
be credited, but his face was a trifle grim when he looked up at his
comrade.

"There are times when a wise man asks no questions, my friend," he said.
"If any one tries to get into the room I have taken to-night he will be
sorry."

Maccario, who was an easy-going Andalusian, laughed somewhat
significantly, and Appleby, glancing at the half-opened lattice,
wondered with unpleasant misgivings whether Miss Harding had heard him.
As it happened, she had, and clenched her hands as she listened. Still,
even then she remembered that the man who had brought her there had said
there was no place in Santa Marta where she would be more secure. It
seemed a bold assertion, but she felt that it could be credited.

"Well," said the Spaniard, whose eyes still twinkled, "we march at
sunrise, and there are richer prizes than pretty faces to be picked up
to-night. The others are busy collecting them. Is it wise to lose one's
chances for a senorita who is unsympathetic?"

The humorous Maccario came very nearly receiving a painful astonishment
just then, but by an effort Appleby kept his temper. "My money is my
friend's, but not my affairs," he said. "Tell your men if they can find
an American with blue eyes to bring him here. It will be worth their
while."

Maccario tossed a handful of cigars into his comrade's knees. "The
Colonel Morales smokes good tobacco, and they were his. If we find the
American we will send him to you. It is by misfortune we do not find the
Colonel Morales."

He went away, and by and by Harper came back with a flask of red wine
and a roll of matting, which he spread out at the top of the stairway.

"I'm pretty big, and anybody who treads on me will get a little
surprise," he said. "You have just got to say 'Gunboat' if you want me."

He was apparently asleep in five minutes, but Appleby lay motionless in
his chair with every sense alert. The laughter and hum of voices had
died away, and only an occasional hoarse shouting rose from the town.
His eyes were fixed on the patio, and his hands, which were hard and
brown, clenched on the rifle; but his thoughts were far away in a garden
where the red beech leaves strewed the velvet grass in peaceful England,
and it was not Nettie Harding's blue eyes, but Violet Wayne's calm gray
ones that seemed to look into his. Harper's words by the camp fire were
bearing fruit, and he was ready to admit now that it was a woman who had
sent him there. There was also satisfaction in the thought that he was
serving her, which was the most he could look for, since his part was to
give and not expect, but he felt that she would approve of what he was
doing then. So the time slipped by; while Nettie Harding, still sitting
behind the lattice, now and then raised her head and looked at him. His
attitude betokened his watchfulness, and with a little sigh of relief
she sank back into her chair again. That ragged figure with the grim,
brown face seemed an adequate barrier between her and whatever could
threaten her.

At last there was a trampling below, and several dusky men staggering
suggestively came up the stairway. The girl heard the sound, and
shivered as she watched them, until a gaunt figure rose up from beneath
their feet. Then they stopped, and one of them fell down the steps and
reeled with a crash against a pillar at the bottom.

"You can stop there. There is plenty of room in the stable," said a
voice; and when Appleby flung up a hand commandingly the men went away,
and there was quietness again.

How long it lasted Nettie did not know, for, though she had no intention
of doing so, she went to sleep, and did not hear a man come up the
stairway. He had a lean face and keen blue eyes, but there was tense
anxiety in them now. Appleby, who rose up, signed Harper to step aside,
and in another moment the two men stood face to face--one of them dusty
and worn and ragged, the other in what had been a few hours earlier
immaculate dress.

"Where is my daughter?" said the latter. "There's five hundred dollars
for any one who will bring her to me."

Appleby smiled a little. "She is here."

The other man shook visibly and clenched his hand, but Appleby moved out
of the shadow so that his face was visible, and the American's grew
quietly stern.

"Then you shall pay for this," he said.

"Hadn't you better speak to Miss Harding first?" said Appleby. "Knock at
the door in front of you. I believe it is bolted inside."

Harding struck the door. There was a little cry of terror that changed
to one of joyful surprise, the door swung open, and the man went inside.
It was five minutes later when he came out again, and he had a wallet in
his hand when he stopped before Appleby. Then he started.

"Good Lord!" he said. "It's Broughton."

Appleby nodded, and saw that Harding was fumbling at the wallet. "No,"
he said. "I would not like you to spoil the acquaintance I am rather
proud of, sir."

Harding's face was flushed as he grasped his hand. "Well," he said, "I
guess the bills aren't printed that could pay you for what you have done
for me. Can't you say something that's appropriate, Nettie?"

"No," said the girl quietly, though there was a faint gleam in her eyes.
"That contract is too big for me. Still, I hope you did not lose many
opportunities, Mr. Broughton, through taking care of me."

Appleby turned to Harding hastily. "I hope you did not have any trouble
with our men?"

"No," said Harding. "It was some time before I saw them. A mob of
citizens swept me away, and when I got clear of them one of Morales'
officers came up mounted with a few men. He went off at a gallop, but
shouted to a sergeant to take care of me, and the fool did it too
efficiently. He was from Mallorca, and couldn't understand my Spanish,
but dragged me along with him. It was an hour before I could get away,
and I spent the rest of the night running up and down the town until
some of your comrades found me."

Appleby nodded. "My friend here will take a few files and go with you to
your hotel," he said. "Our men will have loaded themselves with all they
can carry, and are scarcely likely to trouble you now. We leave at
sunrise."

Harding stood silent for a moment or two, and then said slowly, "Can't
you find anything better than this to do?"

"The Sin Verguenza took me in, and treated me tolerably well," said
Appleby. "I feel bound to stay with them until they have made their
footing good, anyway."

Harper nodded. "When you feel that you can leave them come to me," he
said. "I don't want to lose sight of you."

He shook hands again, and went away with Harper and the girl; but it was
scarcely two hours later when his daughter and he stood upon the flat
roof of the "Four Nations," while a long line of men with rifles, who
were no longer ragged, marched out of Santa Marta. One who marched with
the second company looked up and waved his hand to them.

"That," said Harding gravely, "is a straight man, and he will do
something by and by when he has an opportunity. It is not going to be my
fault if he doesn't get one."




IX -- THE BREAKING OF THE NET


THERE was no wind, and the night was very still, when Appleby lay aching
in every limb behind an aloe hedge which cut off the dim white road.
Harper sat on the steaming earth close beside him contemplatively
munching the end of a cigar, for smoking was distinctly inadvisable just
then, and he was in need of something to stay the pangs of hunger. Here
and there a dusky figure showed among the leaves, and now and then a low
murmur or a soft rustling rose from the black shadow of the overhanging
palms; but the scarcely audible sound sank once more into the silence,
and a muleteer had just passed along the dusty road apparently without
the faintest suspicion that rather more than a hundred famishing men had
watched him with fingers tightening on their rifle barrels. He saw and
heard nothing, which was fortunate for him, and now his voice and the
tramp of his team came back faintly across the cane.

The dew was heavy, as it usually is in the tropics when a clear, still
night follows a day of scorching heat, and Appleby could have wrung it
from the garments he had borrowed from the Alcalde's wardrobe at Santa
Marta. That, however, did not trouble him, for they rested with a
pleasant coolness upon his sun-scorched skin; and he was mainly
conscious of a sense of emptiness and a distressful stitch in his side
as he watched the strip of road. It wound out from the inky shadows of
the palms, led by the hedge of aloes, and was lost again in the cane
that stretched away, a dim sweep of dusky green, under the moon. It was
at least a week since he had had an adequate meal, and he had passed
that day crawling through a mangrove swamp, where pits of foul black
mire lay beneath the great slimy roots.

Haste and concealment had, however, appeared advisable to the Sin
Verguenza; for their success at Santa Marta had brought two strong
battalions upon their trail, and Morales had decreed their
extermination. Cut off from the hills, they had taken to a belt of
reeking mangrove swamps, and Morales, who was too wise to venture his
raw troops in those dim haunts of fever, had persistently drawn his net
tighter about them. They had accordingly divided when supplies ran out,
and the Captain Maccario, who did not know whether the rest had
succeeded in breaking through, had halted those who remained with him to
wait until the moon sank before making a dash for another tract of
jungle. They were, indeed, almost too weary to drag themselves any
further just then, and their leader had reason for believing there was a
company of cazadores somewhere upon the road.

He lay a little apart from Appleby, and raised his head so that the
moonlight shone into his face, which showed intent and anxious, when a
palm frond rustled behind them. There was nothing astonishing in this,
but when the rustle repeated itself it seemed to Appleby that there was
something curiously persistent in the sound. He glanced at the Spaniard,
who saw him, and raised one hand as if in warning. The sound ceased, and
there was once more an impressive silence, which lasted for some
minutes. Then Appleby felt Harper's hand upon his shoulder.

"Look!" he said in a hoarse whisper, and his comrade set his lips as he
turned his head.

A man who had appeared without a sound stood in the white road, his
rigid figure forced up sharp and black against it, and it was evident
that he was peering about him. Then, with a swiftness that had its
significance, he slipped back into the shadow, and moved through it,
stopping a second or two now and then as though to listen. Appleby could
just see him, and felt a little shiver run through him, for he knew the
loyalist scout was running a horrible risk. He hoped the man would see
nothing, for the last thing the Sin Verguenza desired was to chance a
rifle shot just then. He, however, came on, treading softly and stooping
as though to observe the dew-clogged dust, until he stopped again where
a little pathway led in among the aloes.

Then he straightened himself, looked behind him, and turning his head
stared into the shadow of the palms that lay black and impenetrable
beyond the aloes, while the moonlight shone down into his face. It
showed white and set against the dusky background; and Appleby, who
could see the intent eyes, held his breath, for he knew the man's life
hung trembling in the balance. One step would take him to his death, for
another face that was drawn and haggard and had the stamp of hunger on
it showed amidst the leaves behind him. The suspense lasted for a space
of seconds, and Appleby felt himself quivering under the tension, until
the man made a sudden movement as though something suspicious had caught
his eyes. Then there was a rustle of leaves, a shadowy form sprang, and
the scout went down; while Appleby, who saw a flash in the moonlight,
turned his head away. He heard a strangled groan and a struggling amidst
the leaves, and then there was once more an impressive silence.

"Two dollars, senor!" said a dusky man breathlessly, as he came up to
the Captain Maccario; and the Spaniard made a curious little gesture as
he glanced at Appleby.

"You can keep them. Drag him away!" he said in Castilian. "It is the
fortune of war, Don Bernardino!"

Appleby said nothing, but Harper turned to the officer. "The troops will
not be far behind," he said. "Will we get through?"

Maccario shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows?" he said. "It is certain
the cazadores come, but if they march past us the road is open. It is by
misfortune we do not know how many there are of them."

"Where are we going if we do get through?" asked Harper.

Maccario stretching out a brown hand swept it vaguely round the horizon.
"Here and there and everywhere. The Sin Verguenza will vanish until they
are wanted again. There are too many troops in this country, and it is
not difficult to find a hundred men when they are together; but it is
different when you chase them one by one. So Morales stamps out the
insurrection, and when he sends half his troops away we come back
again."

"It is not very evident how we are going to live in the meanwhile," said
Appleby dryly.

Maccario laughed. "What is mine is my friend's, and there is a poor
house at your service. One could reach it in a week's march, and once
there we are short of nothing. This is, you understand, a grateful
country."

There was light enough for Appleby to see the roguish twinkle in the
Spaniard's dark eyes, and he shook his head. "No," he said. "While I
fought with the Sin Verguenza I lived as they did, but it would not suit
me to lie idle and levy contributions upon the country."

"Well," said Maccario reflectively, "in the meanwhile you come with me,
and we may, perhaps, find means of sending you back to the sea. Just now
I do not know whether any of us will get very far. We have two leagues
to make by the carretera before we find cover, and there are cazadores
on the road; while the Captain Vincente will be upon us by daylight if
we stay here."

The others understood as much already, and it was because they did not
know exactly where the cazadores were they were lying there. It was also
a somewhat important question, and they lay still waiting for an answer
until a faintly rhythmic sound came out of the silence. It sank beyond
hearing, but rose again, a trifle louder; and Appleby's heart throbbed
as he recognized the tramp of marching men, while a half-articulate
sound rose from the Sin Verguenza. They were hungry and very weary, and
starvation waited them if they crawled back into the swamps; while the
road that led to safety was closed by the troops. It was, however,
evident that their leader knew his business, and Appleby fancied that if
the detachment was not a strong one they might still break through.

In the meanwhile the rhythmic tramp was steadily growing louder, and he
could tell by the stirring of those about him that they were waiting in
strained expectancy, until there was a patter of footsteps, and a man
came running down the road. He flung himself down gasping beside
Maccario, and his voice was breathless as he said, "It is one company
only."

"Good!" said Maccario dryly. "If they see nothing it is also well. Then
the road will be open from here to Adeje. On the other hand, if they
have good eyes it is unfortunate for them."

There was a faint rattle and clicking as the men fidgeted with magazine
slide, or snapped open breaches to make sure that a cartridge lay in the
chamber. Then an impressive silence followed, which seemed to grow more
intense as the tramp of marching men came ringing sharply down the dim
white road. Perhaps the officer who led them trusted to the scout who
would never bring him a warning back again, or had lately arrived from
Spain, and did not know that the man who sought the Sin Verguenza was
apt to find them where he least expected. Then a faintly musical
jingling and the rattle of wheels became audible too, and Appleby shook
his weariness from him as, with the dust rolling about them, dim figures
swung into sight round a bend of the road. The carretera was a broad
one, and they appeared to be marching carelessly in open fours, for
laughter and the hum of voices came out of the dust.

Raising his head a little he glanced behind him, but the Sin Verguenza
were ominously still and silent now, and he could only see Maccario's
shoulder, and in places a glint of metal where the moonlight sifted
down. Again a quiver ran through him, and his heart thumped painfully as
he watched the men below through the openings between the aloes. Then he
set his lips and grappled with an almost uncontrollable desire to cry
out and warn them. He had been hunted by them, and had seen their
handiwork in the ashes of burnt aldeas that had given his comrades
shelter; but for that Morales was responsible, and the men were for the
most part conscripts reft from their homes in Spain, and going with
laughter on their lips to their doom. The Sin Verguenza struck at night,
in silence, and were seldom contented with a strategetical victory.
Still, because the rattle of riflery carries far, they held their hand
while several loose fours shuffling through the dust went by, and
Appleby felt a trifle easier.

Then there was another space of waiting before the dust that had
commenced to sift down grew thicker again as the head of the company
swung round the bend. They were also marching easily with gaps between
the files, and the jingle of sling, swivel, scabbard, and canteen rang
through their trampling, while the rifles twinkled as the fours swung
across the breadths of moonlight between the shadows of the palms. They
were young men, most of them, and some little more than boys; while here
and there one or two, still unprovided with tropical outfit, wore the
kepi and the cazadores, green; but Appleby had seen the men of the
Peninsula fight before, and checked a groan. He was one of the Sin
Verguenza, and knew what awaited him if Morales was successful, but the
work on hand seemed horrible to him just then.

The tension grew almost insupportable, when one of the soldiers who had
a clear voice started the "Campanadas," and the refrain, that spoke of
grapes and kisses, rolled from four to four. Melodious as it was it
seemed to jar with a horrible discordance upon the silence. Still, there
was a chance that the troops might pass unscathed yet if their officers
saw nothing, and it was with tingling nerves Appleby watched the fours
swing by. Half the company had passed him now.

Then there was a shout from one of the leading fours, and a sharp order,
while a man came running along the line; and the files in front of
Appleby stood still looking about them. He felt his eyes grow dim, and
his fingers quiver on the rifle stock, while his heart throbbed
painfully. Then a mounted officer appeared, apparently on a mule; there
was another order, though Appleby had no notion what it was, and while
the feet commenced to shuffle Maccario cried out.

Appleby felt the rifle butt jar on his shoulder and the barrel jump in
his hand, but saw nothing for a moment beyond wisps of drifting smoke.
It hung about the aloes and obscured the road, but cries and execrations
and orders came out of it, until the rifles of the Sin Verguenza flashed
again. What happened to the cazadores was not apparent then, but it was
evident that some at least survived, for there was a rush of feet in the
smoke, and men with bayonets plunged in among the aloes. They failed to
force a passage through the horrible spines, and another blast of
riflery met them in the face as they floundered and rent themselves.
They had done what men could do, for it was usually a leader's blunder
that involved the troops of Spain in defeat, but no flesh and blood
unsheltered could face that withering fire, and some went down among the
aloes, while the rest flung themselves upon the murderous rifles.

Then the Sin Verguenza came out from their lair, and Appleby swung his
hat off as he ran with a mob of ragged men behind him towards a slim,
white-clad officer who was standing in the road. It was in Castilian he
shouted, but a bitter laugh and the flash of a pistol answered him, and
there was a glint of steel as half-seen men rallied about their leader.
The rifles, however, flashed again, and the cluster of cazadores melted
away as the Sin Verguenza poured out into the road. Appleby sprang over
the fallen officer, and stood still gasping and conscious for the first
time that his foot was paining him. Shadowy men were flying round the
bend of the road but there were, so far as he could see, very few of
them; while the glance he cast round him showed what had happened to the
rest.

"It doesn't look nice," said Harper, who appeared at his side. "Still,
there's a mule team down, and I'm kind of anxious to find out if they
brought anything to eat along."

He disappeared again, and Appleby circumspectly took off one of the
Alcalde of Santa Marta's shoes. His foot felt hot, and the patches of
stocking that clung about it were saturated, but the light was too dim
to show him exactly where it was injured; so he shook the moisture from
the shoe through a place where the stitches had parted and put it on
again, and was standing stiffly with his weight on one leg when Maccario
came by.

"You have five minutes to look for anything you may have a fancy for
in," he said. "There is, however, it seems, a lamentable scarcity of
pesetas among the troops of Spain."

Appleby turned from him with a little gesture of disgust, and Maccario,
who shrugged his shoulders, went away again. But the Sin Verguenza were
expeditious, and within ten minutes had grouped themselves, with bulging
pockets and haversacks made for other men, in straggling fours. Then the
word was given, and they swung away at the best pace they could compass
down the carretera. It cost Appleby an effort to limp along with his
half company, but he managed it for a time, and nobody except Harper
seemed to notice when he lagged behind. Then when they were straggling
behind the rearmost files those in front halted as a man came up, and a
murmur ran along the line.

"Morales with four companies!" said somebody. "Marching by the Adeje
cross-road. If they are not deaf, those cazadores, they have heard the
firing!"

"Forward!" Maccario's voice came back. "With Vincente behind us there
will be masses needed if we do not pass the Adeje road before Morales."

Then the pace grew faster, and Appleby dropped farther behind, with
Harper hanging resolutely at his side. There was very little discipline
among the Sin Verguenza at any time, and every man's first care was to
save his own neck just then. So little by little the distance grew
greater between them and the two lonely men, until when the last of them
swept round a bend Appleby stopped altogether and looked at Harper.

"I can't go any farther on one foot. Push on," he said.

Harper laughed a little. "I've a stitch in my side myself, and this kind
of gallop takes it out of one. I feel kind of tired of the Sin Verguenza
after to-night's work, anyway."

Appleby made a little impatient gesture. "Go on," he said, "go on."

"No, sir. I guess I told you I couldn't run."

"I'm dead lame," said Appleby. "You can't carry me."

"Well, I'm not going to try. We'll hustle along, and it's quite likely
we'll get somebody to take us in."

Appleby made a last effort, but his voice shook a little as he said,
"This is not your business, Harper. You can't do anything for me. Don't
be a fool!"

Harper laid a hard hand on his shoulder. "Now, I have no use for
arguing. We are white men alone in a heathen country, and you can't help
not being an American, anyway. When he's in a tight place I don't go
back on my partner. You lean on me, and we'll come to a hole we can
crawl into by and by."

He slipped his arm under Appleby's shoulder, and they shuffled on alone
down the dim white road. There was silence all about them, and the tramp
of the Sin Verguenza came back more and more faintly out of the distance
until it ceased altogether.




X -- AN UNEXPECTED MEETING


IT was almost cold and very still when Appleby looked out from his lair
among the cane. Morning had not come but the clump of trees that had
been a mere blur of shadow when he last awakened had grown into definite
form, and rose black and solemn against the eastern sky. This was no
longer dusky indigo, but of a softer color tinged with a faint pearly
gray, while detached stalks of cane seemed to be growing into
visibility. Then he stood up with a little shiver, his torn garments
clinging about him wet with the dew, and became vaguely conscious that
he was very uncomfortable. His limbs ached with weariness, and there was
a distressful stiffness in his hip-joint which those who have slept on
damp ground are acquainted with, while his foot throbbed painfully.

These sensations, however, vanished, and left him intent and alert, for
a sound he recognized came quivering through the still, cool air. It was
evident that Harper heard it also, for he rose stiffly, and his face
showed faintly white as he turned in the direction of the carretera
which ran through the cane some fifty yards away.

"Troops! It's kind of fortunate we crawled in here," he said.

Appleby nodded, for he had passed the greater part of six months hiding
from the troops of Spain, and the tramp of marching men was unpleasantly
familiar to him, while now, as it grew louder in a dull staccato, it
seemed unusually portentous and sinister. The earth lay still and
peaceful, wrapped in shadow, while the pearly grayness changed to a pale
ruby gleam in the eastern sky; but that beat of human feet jarred
dissonantly through nature's harmonies.

It swelled in slow crescendo, a rhythm of desecration, while the thin
jingle of steel and a confused rattling that had still a measured
cadence also became audible. The two men who heard it sat very still
among the cane, until Appleby, who was not usually a prey to
apprehensive fancies, started at the clack of Harper's rifle as he
snapped down the lever and closed the breach again. The sound seemed to
ring about them with a horrible distinctness.

"They seem in a hurry, and that's quite fortunate for us," said Harper.
"Anyway, if they see us they're not going to get me while there's
anything in the magazine. I've no use for being stood up with my hands
tied against a wall."

Appleby said nothing, but his brown fingers stiffened on the wet Marlin
rifle, and Harper smiled in a somewhat sardonic fashion when he saw the
glint in his half-closed eyes. Reticence is not accounted a virtue in
his country, but the Englishman's immobility was eloquent, and his
comrade was satisfied that if the worst came they would not start out on
the unknown trail alone. Then four by four dim figures swung out of the
shadows, and the cane seemed to shiver in unison with their trampling as
they went by with a forest of sloped rifles wavering above them. Here
and there a mounted officer showed above the rest; while even when the
leading fours were lost again in the shadows there seemed no end to
them, and there was still no slackening in the sonorous beat of feet. At
last, however, laden beasts appeared with men who straggled about them,
then two or three more sections with rifles trailed; and Appleby drew in
a deep breath when once more the gap between the cane was empty.

"There will be no room for the Sin Verguenza now, and nobody will be
likely to take us in," he said. "What is to be done, Harper?"

"Go to sleep!" said the American tranquilly. "I wouldn't worry about the
Sin Verguenza. Quite a few of them have picked up enough to retire on. I
wish I hadn't handed my haversack to black Domingo when I went back for
you. That's what's troubling me."

Appleby laughed, and rolled into the little hollow he had made for
himself with the careless disregard of the future which is not
infrequently the adventurer's most valuable possession. He also slept
soundly, and the sun was high when he awakened with a start to see a man
looking down on him. He was dressed in unstarched linen, frayed but very
clean, and a big straw hat, while he held a hoe and a basket in one
hand, and stood regarding Appleby with grave curiosity.

"There is much sun to-day, senor," he said.

Appleby shifted his hand from the rifle and laid it restrainingly on
Harper, who staggered to his feet, for there was something that inspired
him with confidence in the man's dark eyes.

"Are there troops on the road?" he asked.

"No," said the man. "None between here and Arucas. The senores are--"

"Friends of liberty!" and Harper grinned as he straightened himself and
turned to Appleby. "Hadn't you better tell him the question is where can
two patriots get anything to eat?"

The man glanced at their haggard faces and torn garments, which were
white with dust and clammy with dew.

"Ave Maria!" he said softly, and taking a small loaf from the basket
broke it into two pieces. One he held out with a bottle of thin red
wine, while he glanced at the other half of the loaf deprecatingly.

"One must eat to work," he said, as if in explanation. "There is always
work for the poor, and between the troops and the Sin Verguenza they
have very little else here."

A flush crept into Appleby's forehead, and Harper pulled out a few
pesetas, which was all he had, but the man shook his head.

"No, senor," he said. "It is for the charity, and one cannot have the
liberty for nothing. Still, there are many contributions one must make,
and I cannot do more."

Appleby, who understood the significance charity has in Spain, took the
provisions and lifted his battered hat as the man turned away; but when
he had taken a pace or two he came back again and dropped a little
bundle of maize-husk cigarettes and a strip of cardboard matches beside
them. Then, without a word, he plodded away down a little path while
Harper looked at Appleby with wonder in his eyes.

"I guess there are men like him in every nation, though they're often
quite hard to find," he said. "More style about him than a good many of
our senators have at home. Well, we'll have breakfast now, and then get
on again."

They ate the half loaf and drank the wine; but Harper looked grave when
Appleby took off his shoe. His foot seemed badly swollen, but he
desisted from an attempt to remove the torn and clotted stocking with a
wry smile, and put on the shoe again. Then he limped out into the road
and plodded painfully down it under the scorching sun all that morning
without plan or purpose, though he knew that while it lay not far from
Santa Marta the Insurgents had friends and sympathizers in the aldea of
Arucas, which was somewhere in front of them. They met nobody. The road
wound away before them empty as well as intolerably hot and dusty,
though here and there a group of men at work in the fields stopped and
stared at them; and they spent an hour making what Harper called a
traverse round a white aldea they were not sure about. Then they lay
down awhile in a ruined garden beside the carretera.

There was a nispero tree in the garden laden with acid yellow fruit, and
Appleby ate the handful Harper brought him greedily, for he was slightly
feverish and grimed with dust. Then they smoked the peasant's maize-husk
cigarettes and watched the purple lizards crawl about the fire-blackened
ruins of the house. They could hear the rasp of machetes amidst the cane
and the musical clink of hoes, while now and then a hum of voices
reached them from the village; and once, with a great clatter, a mounted
man in uniform went by.

Harper lay still, drowsily content to rest; but those sounds of human
activity troubled Appleby. The men who made them had work to do, and a
roof to shelter them when their toil was done, but he was drifting
aimlessly as the red leaves he had watched from the foot-bridge one
winter day in England. Tony stood beside him then, and he wondered
vaguely what Tony was doing now--playing the part of gentleman steward to
Godfrey Palliser with credit to himself and the good will of his uncle's
tenants, riding through English meadows, meeting men who were glad to
welcome him in London clubs, or basking in the soft gleam of Violet
Wayne's eyes. It was the latter only that Appleby envied him; and he
wondered whether Tony, who had so much, knew the full value of the love
that had been given him as the crown of all, and then brushed the
thoughts away when Harper rose.

"We have got to make Arucas by to-night, or lie out starving, which is a
thing I have no use for," he said. "It's a long hustle."

Appleby rose, and staggered as he placed his weight upon his injured
foot, and then, while Harper laid a steadying hand on his shoulder,
limped out into the carretera. It stretched away before them, white, and
hot, and straight, with scarcely a flicker of shadow to relieve its
blinding glare; and Appleby half closed his eyes, while the perspiration
dripped from Harper's face.

"And it's quite often I've sworn I'd turn farmer and never go to sea
again! Well, I guess there are more fools like me!"

Appleby had no observa

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