Chapter II: Part 2

“If Juanita were about it would be different,” he said, whipping the cloth from the table and shaking the crumbs to the four winds. “And the Senorita would be properly served. But--what will you? the nino is but a fortnight old, and I--I am new at my trade. The Senorita takes coffee?”

Miss Cheyne intimated that she did take coffee.

“And you, perhaps, will take a cup also,” she added, whereupon the man bowed in his best manner. He had that perfect savoir-faire--a certain innate gentlemanliness--which is the characteristic of all Spaniards. His manner indicated an appreciation of the honour, and conveyed at the same time the intimation that he knew quite well how to behave under the circumstances.

He went into the house from which--all the doors and windows being open--came the sound of his conversation with Juanita, while he prepared the coffee. It was quite a frank and open conversation, having Miss Cheyne for its object, and stating that she had not only found the omelette good, but had eaten it all.

Presently he returned with the coffee-pot, two cups, and a small jug of cream on a tray. He turned the handle of the coffee-pot towards Miss Cheyne, and conveyed in one inimitable gesture that he would take his coffee from no other hand.

“The Senorita is staying in Palma?” he asked, pleasantly.

“Yes.”

“For pleasure?”

“No--for business.”

The innkeeper laughed gaily and deprecatingly, as if between persons of their station business was a word only to be mentioned as a sort of jest.

“I am the owner of a small property in the island--over in that direction--towards Soller. It is held on the 'rotas' system by a good farmer, who has frequently come to see me where I live at Monistrol, near Barcelona. He has often begged me to come to Majorca to see the property, and now I have come. I am staying a few days at Palma.”

“Farming is good in Majorca,” said the man, shrewdly. “You should receive a large sum for your share of the harvest. I, too, shall buy land presently when I see my chance, for I have the money. Ah, yes: I was not always an innkeeper!”

He sipped his coffee pensively.

“That reminds me again of my friend,” he said, after a pause. “Why do I think of him this afternoon? It is a strange story; shall I tell it?”

“I shall be glad to hear it,” replied Miss Cheyne, in her energetic way. She was stirring her coffee slowly and thoughtfully.

“I knew him in his own country--in America; and then in Cuba--”

Miss Cheyne ceased stirring her coffee suddenly, as if she had come against some object in the cup. A keen observer might have guessed that she had become interested at that moment in this idle tale.

“Ah! You know Cuba?” she said, indifferently interrogative.

“If I know Cuba?” he laughed, and spread out his hands in mute appeal to the gods. “If I know Cuba! When Cuba is an independent republic, Senorita--when the history of all this trouble comes to be written, you will find two names mentioned in its pages. The one name is Antonio. When you are an old woman, Senorita, you can tell your children--or perhaps your grandchildren, if the good God is kind to you--that you once knew Antonio, and took a cup of coffee with him. But you must not say it now--never--never. And the other name is Mateo. You can tell your children, Senorita, when your hair is white, that you once spoke to a man who was a friend to this Mateo.”

He finished with his gay laugh, as if he were fully alive to his own fine conceit, and begged indulgence.

“He has been here--sitting where you sit now,” he continued, with impressive gravity. “He came to me: 'Antonio,' he said, 'There are five thousand men out there who want you.' 'Amigo,' replied I, 'there is one woman here who does the same'--and I bowed, and Mateo went away without me. I thought he had gone back there to conduct affairs--to fight in his careless way, with his tongue in his cheek, as it were. He did all with his tongue in his cheek--that queer Mateo. And then came a message from Barcelona, saying that he wanted me. Name of a dog, I went--for his letter was unmistakable. He had, it appeared, had an accident. I found him with his arm in a sling. He had been cared for in the house of an Englishwoman--so much he told--but I guessed more. This Englishwoman--well, he said so little about her, that I could only conclude one thing. You know, Senorita--when a man will not talk of a woman--well, it assuredly means something. But there was, it appears, another man--this man, I grind my teeth to tell you of it--he was a priest. One Bernaldez, whom we had both known in Cuba. He had, it appears, come over to Spain in ordinary dress; for he was too well known to travel as Bernaldez, the priest. He was a fine man--so much I will say for him. The Englishwoman was, no doubt, beautiful. Bernaldez met her. She did not know that he was a priest.”

Antonio paused, shrugged his shoulders and spread out his arms.

“The devil did the rest, Senorita. And she? Did she care for him? Ah--one never knows with women.”

“Perhaps they do not always know themselves,” suggested Miss Cheyne, without meeting her companion's eyes.

“Perhaps that is so, Senorita. At all events, Mateo went to these two, when they were together. Mateo was always quick and very calm. He faced Bernaldez, and he told the woman. Then he left them. And I found him in Barcelona, two days afterwards, living at the Hotel of the Four Nations, like one in his sleep. 'If Bernaldez wants me,' he said, 'he knows where to find me.' And the next day Bernaldez came to us, where we sat in front of the Cafe of the Liceo on the Rambla. 'Mateo,' he said, 'you will have to fight me.' And Mateo nodded his head. 'With the revolver.' Mateo looked up with his dry smile. 'I will take you at that game,' he said, 'for nuts'--in the American fashion, Senorita--one of their strange sad jokes. Then Bernaldez sat down--his eyes were hollow; he spoke like one who has been down to the bottom of misery. 'I know a place,' he said, 'that will suit our purpose. It is among the mountains, on the borders of Andorra. You take the train from Barcelona to Berga, the diligencia from Berga to Organa. Between Organa and La Seo de Urgel is a bridge called La Puente del Diabolo. I will meet you at this bridge on foot on Thursday morning at nine o'clock. We can walk up into the mountains together. I shall bring a small travelling clock with me. We shall stand it on the ground between us, and when it strikes, we fire.'”

Antonio had, in the heat of his narrative, leant forward across the table. With quick gestures he described the whole scene, so that Miss Cheyne could see it as it had passed before his eyes.

“There is a madness, Senorita,” he went on, “which shows itself by a thirst for blood. I looked at Bernaldez. He was sane enough, but I think the man's heart was broken. 'It is well,' said Mateo; 'I am your man--at the Puente del Diabolo at nine o'clock on Thursday morning.' And mind you, Senorita, these were not Italians or Greeks--they were a Spaniard and an American--men who mean what they say, whether it be pleasant or the reverse.”

Miss Cheyne was interested enough now. She sat, leaning one arm on the table, and her chin in the palm of her hand. She held her lip with her teeth, and watched the man's quick expressive face.

“We were there at nine o'clock,” he went on, “that Mateo, with his arm in a sling. We had passed the night at the hotel of the Libertad at Organa, where we both slept well enough. What will you?--when one is no longer young, the pulse is slow. The morning mist had descended the mountain side, the air was cold. There at the Puente, leaning against the wall, cloaked and quiet--was Bernaldez. 'Ah!' he said to me, 'you have come, too?' 'Yes, Amigo,' I answered, 'but I do not give the word for two friends to let go at each other. Your little clock can do that.' He nodded and said nothing. Senorita, I was sorry for the man. Who was I that I should judge? You remember, you, who read your Bible, the writing on the ground? Bernaldez led the way, and we climbed up into the mountains in the morning mist. Somewhere above us there was a little waterfall singing its eternal song. In the cloud, where we could not see him, a curlew hung on his heavy wings, and gave forth his low warning whistle. 'Have a care--have a care,' he seemed to cry. Presently Bernaldez stopped, and looked around him. It was a desolate place. 'This will do,' he said. 'And he who drops may be left here. The other may turn on his heel, say “A Dios,” and go in safety. 'Yes,' answered Mateo. 'This will do as well as any other place.' Bernaldez looked at him, with a laugh. 'Ah,' he said, 'you think that you are sure to kill me--but I shall, at all events, have a shot for my money. Who knows? I may kill you.' 'That is quite possible,' answered Mateo. Bernaldez threw back his cloak. He carried the little travelling clock in one hand--a gilt thing made in Paris. 'We will stand it here,' he said, 'on a rock between us.' We were in a little hollow far up the mountain side, and the mist wrapped us round like a cloak. I know these mountains, Senorita, for it was here that the fiercest of the fighting in the last Carlist War took place. There are many dead up there even now, who have never been found. I also was in that trouble--ah, no, I was not always an innkeeper!”

“Go on with your story,” said Miss Cheyne, curtly, and closed her teeth over her lower lip again.

“We stood there, then, and watched Bernaldez take the clock from its case. He held it to his ear to make sure that it was going. It seemed to me that it ticked as loud up there as a clock ticks in a room at night. Bernaldez set forward the hands till they stood at five minutes to eleven. 'The eleventh hour,' said Mateo, with his dry laugh. Bernaldez set the clock down again. He took off his hat and threw it down to mark the ground. 'Ten paces,' he said, and, turning on his heel, counted aloud. I looked half-instinctively at his bared head. The tonsure was still visible to any who sought it; for it was but half-grown over. Mateo counted his steps and then turned. The clock gave a little tick, as such clocks do, four minutes before they strike. It seemed to me to hurry its pace as we three stood listening in that silence. We could hear the whisper of the clouds as they hurried through the mountains. The clock gave another click, and the two men raised their pistols of a similar pattern. The little gong rang out, and immediately after two shots, one following the other. Bernaldez had fired first. Mateo--a man with a reputation to care for--took a moment longer for his aim. I heard Bernaldez's bullet sing past his ear like a mosquito. Bernaldez fell forward--thus, on his arm--and the clock had not ceased striking when we stood over him; and Mateo had held the pistol in his left hand.”

The narrator finished abruptly with a quick gesture. All through his story he had added a vividness to his description by quick movements of the hand and head, by his flashing eyes, his southern fire, so that his hearer could see the scene as he had seen it; could feel the stillness of the mountains; could hear the whisper of the clouds; could see the two men facing each other in the mist. With a gesture he showed her how Bernaldez lay, on his face on the wet stones, with a half-concealed tonsure, turned towards heaven in mute appeal, awaiting the last great hearing of his case in that Court where there is no appeal.

“And there we left him, Senorita,” added Antonio, shortly.

He rose, walked away from her to the edge of the great slope, and stood looking down into the valley that lay shimmering below him. After a time he came back slowly. In his simplicity he was not ashamed of dimmed eyes.

“I tell you this, Senorita,” he said with a laugh, “because you are an Englishwoman, and because this Mateo was my friend. He is an American. His name is Whittaker--Matthew S. Whittaker. And this afternoon I was reminded of him; I know not why. Perhaps it was something that I said myself, or some gesture that I made, which I had caught from him. If one thinks much about a person, one may catch his gestures or his manner: is it not so? And then you reminded me of him a second time. That was strange.”

“Yes,” said Miss Cheyne, thoughtfully; “that was strange.”

“He went to Cuba again at once, Senorita; that was a year ago. And I have never heard from him. If, as the peasants say, the mind of a friend has wings, perhaps Mateo's mind has flown on to tell me that he is coming. He said he would come back.”

“Why was he coming back?” asked Miss Cheyne.

“I do not know, Senorita.”

Miss Cheyne had risen, and was making ready to depart. Her gloves and riding-whip lay on the table. The afternoon was far spent, and already the shadows were lengthening on the mountain-side. She paid the trifling account, Antonio taking the money with such a deep bow that the smallness of the coin was quite atoned for. He brought her horse from the stable.

“The horse and the Senorita are both tired,” he said, with his pleasant laugh. And, indeed, Miss Cheyne looked suddenly weary. “It is not right that you should go by the mountain path,” he added. “It is so easy to lose the way. Besides, a lady alone--it is not done in Spain.”

“No; but in England women are learning to take care of themselves,” laughed Miss Cheyne.

She placed her foot within his curved hands, and he lifted her to the saddle. All her movements were easy and independent. It seemed that she only stated a fact, and the man shook his head forebodingly. He belonged to a country which in some ways is a century behind England and America. She nodded a farewell, and turned the horse's head towards the mountain path.

“I shall find my way,” she said. “Never fear.”

“Only by good fortune,” he answered, with a shake of the head.

The sun had almost set when she reached Palma. At the hotel her lawyer, who had made the voyage from Barcelona with her, awaited her with impatience, while her maid leant idly from the window. In the evening she went abroad again, alone, in her independent way. She walked slowly on the Cathedral terrace, where priests lingered, and a few soldiers from the neighbouring barracks smoked a leisurely cigarette. All turned at intervals, and looked in the same direction--namely, towards the west, where the daylight yet lingered in the sky. The moon, huge and yellow, was rising over the mountains, above Manacor, at the eastern end of the island. One by one the idlers dropped away, moving with leisurely steps towards the town. In very idleness Miss Cheyne followed them. She knew that they were going to the harbour in anticipation of the arrival of the Barcelona steamer. She was on the pier with the others, when the boat came alongside. The passengers trooped off, waving salutations to their friends. One among them, a small-made, frail man, detached himself from the crowd, and made his way towards Miss Cheyne, as if this meeting had been prearranged--and who shall say that it was not?--by the dim decrees of Fate.

IN A CROOKED WAY

“And let the counsel of thine own heart stand.”

It was almost dark, and the Walkham River is much overhung in the parts that lie between Horrabridge and the old brickworks.

In the bed of the river a man stumbled heavily along, trusting more to his knowledge of the river than to his eyesight. He was fishing dexterously with flies that were almost white--flies which seemed to suit admirably the taste of those small brown trout which never have the sense to leave alone the fare provided for their larger white brethren.

Suddenly he hooked a larger fish, and, not daring to step back beneath the overhanging oak, he proceeded to tire his fish out in the deep water. In ten minutes he brought it to the landing-net, and as he turned to open his creel his heart leapt in his breast. A man was standing in the water not two feet behind him.

“Holloa,” he gasped.

“I won't insult you by telling you not to be frightened,” said the voice of a gentleman. There was no mistaking it. The speaker stood quite still, with the water bubbling round his legs. He was hatless, and his hair was cut quite short.

A thought flashed across the fisherman's slow brain. Like the rest of his craft, he was slower of mind than of hand.

“Yes,” said the other, divining his thoughts, “I'm from Dartmoor. You probably heard of my escape two days ago.”

“Yes,” replied the other, quietly, while he wound in his line. “I heard of it.”

“And where do they say I am?”

“Oh, the police have got a clue--as usual,” replied the fisherman.

The escaped convict laughed bitterly, but the laugh broke off into a sickening cackle.

“I've been in those brickworks,” he said, “all the time, meditating murder. I stole a loaf from a baker's cart; but man cannot live by bread alone; ah! Ha! ha!”

The fisherman held out his flask, which the other took, and opened the somewhat uncommon silver top with ease bred of knowledge.

He poured himself out a full glass and drank it off.

“I haven't had that taste in my mouth for four years,” he said, returning the flask. “And you are guilty of felony!”

The fisherman probably knew this, for he merely laughed.

“Do you know Prince Town?” the convict asked abruptly.

The other nodded, glancing in the direction of the rising moor.

“And you've read the rules on the gate? Parcere subjectis, cut in the stone over the top. Good God!”

The fisherman nodded again.

“The question is,” said the convict, after a pause, during which they had waded back to the bank, “whether you are going to help me or not? Heavens! I NEARLY killed you while you were playing that fish.”

“Ya-as,” drawled the fisherman. “I take it that you must have been tempted. I never heard you, owing to the rush of the water.”

They were both big men, and the convict stared curiously into the long, clean-shaven face of this calm speaker. A smile actually flickered for a moment in his desperate eyes.

“What I want,” he said, “is your mackintosh, your waders, and your hat--also your rod-case with a long stick in it. The handle of your landing-net will do. Where do you come from?”

“Plymouth. I am going back by the seven-thirty from Horrabridge.”

“With a return ticket?”

“Yes.”

“I should like that also.”

The fisherman was slowly disjointing his rod.

“Suppose I told you to come and take 'em?” he said, with the drawl again.

The convict looked him up and down with a certain air of competent criticism.

“Then there would be a very pretty fight,” he said, with a laugh, which he checked when he detected the savour of the prison-yard that was in it.

“We haven't time for the fight,” said the fisherman.

And there came a hot gasp of excitement from the convict's lips. His stake was a very large one.

In the same slow, reflective manner, the fisherman unbuttoned the straps of his waders at the thigh, and sat down to unlace his brogues.

“Here,” he said, “pull 'em off for me. They're so damnably sopped.”

He held up his leg, and the convict pulled off the wet fishing-stockings with some technical skill.

He drew them on over his own stockinged legs, and the fisherman kicked the brogues towards him. In exchange the convict handed him his own shoes.

“Am I to wear these?” the fisherman asked, with something in his voice that might have been amusement.

“Yes; they're a little out of shape, I'm afraid. The Queen is no judge of a shoe.”

“I guess not!” answered the other, lacing.

There was a little silence.

“I suppose,” said the convict, with a curious eagerness, “that you have seen a bit of the world?”

“Here and there,” answered the other, searching for the return half of his ticket.

“Should you think, now, that a girl would wait four years for a chap who, in the eyes of the world, was not worth waiting for?”

The fisherman, not being an absolute fool, knew that there was only one answer to give. But he was a kind-hearted man, so he told a lie. There was something about this convict that made him do it.

“Yes; I should think she would. Girls are not always rational, I guess.”

The other said nothing. He took the mackintosh-coat and the creel and the rod-case without a word--even of thanks. His manners were brisker, as if the angler's lie had done him good. The change of costume was now complete, and the convict would pass anywhere for an innocent disciple of Isaac Walton.

For a moment they stood thus, looking at each other. Then the convict spoke.

“Can you lend me a fiver?” he asked.

“Oh yes!”

Carelessly opening his purse, and displaying a good number of bank-notes, he passed one to the unsteady hand held out.

“Want any more?” he asked, with a queer laugh.

“I'll take another if you can spare it.”

A second note passed from hand to hand.

“Thanks,” said the convict. “Now, tell me your name and address; I shall want to send these things back to you if--if I have any luck.”

And the effort to steady his voice was quite apparent.

“Caleb S. Harkness, United States frigate Bruiser, now lying at Plymouth,” replied the other, tersely.

“Ah! you are an American?”

“That is why I don't care a d--n for your laws.”

“MR. Harkness--or what?”

“I'm her captain,” he replied modestly.

They shook hands and parted.

It was only as he plodded along the Tavistock Road, limping in the regulation shoes, that the American remembered that he had quite omitted to ask the convict any questions. He had parted with his mackintosh, and it was pouring. Tavistock was two miles off, and he had no notion what trains there were to Plymouth. Yet he regretted nothing, and at times a queer smile flitted over his countenance. He was a man holding very decided views of his own upon most subjects, and no one suspected him of it, because he never sought to force them upon others. What he loved above all in men was that species of audacious and gentlemanly coolness which is found in greater perfection in the ranks of the British aristocracy than anywhere else in the world.

He was not the sort of man to be afraid of any one, or two, or three men--he had never, for a moment, thought of fearing the fellow who had gone off with his mackintosh, his waders, and his two five-pound notes. We all try to be our ideal, and Caleb S. Harkness prided himself on being the coolest man in the two hemispheres. He had met a cooler, and rather than acknowledge his inferiority he had parted with the valuables above mentioned, with no other guarantee of their safe return than a gentlemanly inflection of voice.

Two days later he received his waders, mackintosh, and brogues; also a new fishing-rod of the very best quality made in England, and two five-pound notes.

America loves to show her appreciation of her great sons, but she does not always do it wisely when she begins to cast honours about. If England showed the same appreciation, some of us would not be so cruelly industrious with our pens; but that is the affair of the British public, who suffer most.

Caleb S. Harkness was bound to get on. Firstly, because his audacity was unrivalled, and secondly, he knew it was wise to be audacious.

In due course he rose as high as he conveniently could in the Navy active, and turned his attention to the Navy passive, which latter means a nice little house in Washington, and the open arms of the best society in that enlightened city. Here also he got on, because men were even more impressed by his audacity than the sea had been. Also he developed a new talent. He found within himself an immense capacity for making others appear ridiculous, and there is no man in the world so sensitive as your American senator.

Thus in six years' time we find Caleb S. Harkness moving, not in the bed of an English trout-stream, but in the lap of Washingtonian luxury. It was a great night in the Government city, for England had sent one of her brightest stars to meet the luminaries of the United States in peaceful arbitration. The British Plenipotentiary had not yet been seen of the multitude--but he was the eldest son of a British Earl, and had a title of his own. That was enough for Washington, with some to spare for Boston and New York. Also he had proved himself equal to two American statesmen and their respective secretaries. He was, therefore, held in the highest esteem by all the political parties except that to which the worsted statesmen belonged.

The President's levee was better attended than usual; that is to say, there was not even room on the stairs, and America's first-born, as per election, had long ago lost all feeling in the digits of his right hand.

Caleb S. Harkness was moving about in the quieter rooms, awaiting the great crush, when a lady and a man entered and looked around them with some amusement.

“Lord!” ejaculated Admiral Harkness, when his slow and mournful eyes rested on the lady. The exclamation, if profane, was justified, for it is probable that the American had never before set eyes on such a masterpiece of the Creator's power. There was in this woman's being--in her eyes, her face, her every movement--that combination of nonchalance and dignity which comes to beautiful and bright-minded girls when they are beginning to leave girlhood behind them. She was moderately tall, with hair of living brown, and deep blue eyes full of life and sweetness. She was not slim, but held herself like a boy with the strength that comes of perfect proportion. She was one of those women who set a soldier or a sailor thinking what manner of men her brothers must be.

Caleb Harkness observed all this with the unobtrusive scrutiny of his nation. He was standing near a curtained doorway buttoning his glove, and some one coming behind him pushed against him.

“Beg pardon, Harkness,” said a voice, and the Chief Secretary of the English Legation patted him on the shoulder. “Didn't see you. Looking for some one. By George, what a heat! Ah! there he is--thank goodness!”

And he went towards the lady and man who had just entered.

“Here, Monty, you're wanted at once,” Harkness heard him say to the youth, who appeared to be a few years younger than his beautiful companion.

He spoke a few words to the lady, who replied laughingly, and the British Attache came towards Harkness.

“Harkness,” he said; “want to introduce you to Lady Storrel.”

The American followed with a smile on his lean face. He knew that he was being introduced to Lady Storrel merely because there happened to be no one else at hand and her cavalier was wanted elsewhere.

“Lady Storrel, let me present to you Admiral Harkness, the man,” he added, over his shoulder, “who is going to make the United States the first Naval Power in the world.”

And with a good-natured laugh the two men went off, speaking hurriedly together.

“Is that true?” asked the lady, smiling with that mixture of girlishness and English grand-ladyism, which was so new to Caleb S. Harkness.

“Quite,” he answered; “but I am not going to tell you how.”

“No, please don't. Of course, you are an American?”

“Yes; but you need not mind that.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, looking at him frankly.

“I take it,” he answered, with a twinkle in his grave eyes, which she saw, and liked him for, “that you want some one to listen to your impressions of--all this. It IS rum, is it not?”

She laughed. “Yes,” she admitted, “it is--RUM.”

In a few minutes they had found a seat beneath a marvellous stand of flowers, and she was chattering away like a schoolgirl while he listened, and added here and there a keen comment or a humorous suggestion.

Presently she began talking of herself, and in natural sequence of her husband, of their home in England, of his career, and her hatred of politics.

“And,” she said suddenly, at the end of it, “here IS my husband.”

Harkness followed the direction of her glance, and looked upon a man in English Court-dress coming towards them.

“Ah!” he said, in a peculiar, dull voice, “that is your husband?”

She was smiling upon the man who approached, beckoning to him to come with her eyes, as women sometimes do. She turned sharply upon Harkness, her attention caught by something in his voice.

“Yes?” she answered.

Harkness had risen with a clatter of his sword on the polished floor, and stood awaiting the introduction.

“My husband--Admiral Harkness.”

The men bowed, and, before they could exchange a banal observation, the fair young man who had been called away came up.

“Phew, this is worse than Simla,” he said; then, offering his arm to Lady Storrel, “Alice,” he continued, “I have discovered some ices, THE most lovely ices.”

They moved away, the lady favouring Harkness with a little nod, leaving the two tallest men in that assembly facing each other.

When they were gone, Caleb S. Harkness and Lord Storrel looked into each other's eyes.

“So,” said Harkness, lapsing suddenly into a twang, “she waited.”

The other nodded. He raised his perfectly gloved hand to his moustache, which he tugged pensively to either side.

“Yes,” he answered; “she waited.”

Then he looked round the room, and, seeing that they were almost alone, he moved towards the seat just vacated by his wife.

“Come and sit down,” he said, “and I will tell you a little story.”

“Does she know it?” enquired Harkness, when they were seated.

“No.”

“Then I don't want to hear it! You'd better keep it to yourself, I reckon.”

The Englishman gave a little laugh, and lapsed into silence--thinking abstractedly.

“I should like to tell you some of it, for my own sake. I don't want you to go away thinking--something that is not the fact.”

“I would rather not have the story,” persisted Harkness. This American had some strange notions of a bygone virtue called chivalry. “Give me a few facts--I will string them together.”

Lord Storrel was sitting forward on his low chair, with his hands clasped between his knees. They were rather large hands--suggestive of manual labour.

“Suppose,” he said, without looking round, “that a man is in a street row in Dublin, when no one knows he is even in the town. Suppose the--eh--English side of the question is getting battered, and he hits out and kills a drunken beast of an Irish agitator. Suppose an innocent man is accused of it and the right chap is forced to come forward and show up UNDER A FALSE NAME and gets five years. Suppose he escapes after three and a half, and goes home, saying that he has been in America, cattle ranching--having always been a scapegrace, and a ne'er-do-well, who never wrote home when he had gone off in a huff. Suppose he had tried all this for the sake of--a girl, and had carried it through--”

Caleb Harkness had discovered that the identity of the British Plenipotentiary had become known to some of the more curious of the President's guests, who were now mooning innocently around them as they sat. He moved in his chair as if to rise.

“Yes--I can suppose all that,” he said.

The Englishman's nerve was marvellous. He saw what Harkness had seen a moment before, and over his face came the bland smile of an intelligent English man talking naval matters with an American admiral.

“Of course,” he said, “I am at your mercy.”

“I was at yours once; so now we are quits, I take it.”

And the two big men rose and passed out of the room together.

THE TALE OF A SCORPION

Spain is a country where custom reigns supreme. The wonder of to-day is by to-morrow a matter of indifference.

The man who came a second time to the Cafe Carmona in the Calle Velasquez in Seville must have known this; else the politely surprised looks, the furtive glances, the whisperings that met his first visit would have sent him to some other house of mild entertainment. The truth was that the Cafe Carmona was, and is still, select; with that somewhat narrow distinctiveness which is observed by such as have no friendly feelings towards the authorities that be.

It is a small Cafe, and foreigners had better not look for it. Yet this man was a foreigner--in fact an Englishman. He was one of those quiet, unobtrusive men, who are taller than they look, and more important than they care to be considered. He could, for instance, pass down the crowded Sierpe of an evening, without so much as attracting a glance; for, by a few alterations in dress, he converted his outward appearance into that of a Spaniard. He was naturally dark, and for reasons of his own he spared the razor. His face was brown, his features good, and a hat with a flat brim is easily bought. Thus this man passed out of his hotel door in the evening the facsimile of a dozen others walking in the same street.

Moreover, he had no great reason for doing this. He preferred, he said, to pass unnoticed. But at the Foreign Office it was known that no man knew Spain as Cartoner knew it. Some men are so. They take their work seriously. Cartoner had looked on the map of Europe some years before for a country little known of the multitude, and of which the knowledge might prove to be of value. His eye lighted on Spain; and he spent his next leave there, and the next, and so on.

Consequently there was no one at the Foreign Office who could hold a candle to Cartoner in matters Spanish. That is already something--to have that said of one. He is a wise man nowadays who knows something (however small it be) better than his neighbour. Like all his kind, this wise man kept his knowledge fresh. He was still learning--he was studying at the Cafe Carmona in the little street in Seville, called Velasquez.

When he pushed the inner glass door open and lounged into the smoke-filled room, the waiter, cigarette in mouth, nodded in a friendly way without betraying surprise. One or two old habitues glanced at him, and returned to the perusal of La Libertad or El Imparcial without being greatly interested. The stranger had come the night before. He liked the place--the coffee suited his taste--“y bien,” let him come again.

The waiter came forward without removing the cigarette from his lips; which was already a step. It placed this new-comer on a level with the older frequenters of the Carmona.

“Cafe?” he inquired.

“Cafe!” replied the stranger, who spoke little.

He had selected a little table standing rather isolated at one end of the room, and he sat with his back to the wall. The whole Cafe Carmona lay before him, and through the smoke of his cigarette he looked with quiet, unobtrusive eyes, studying... studying.

Presently an old man entered. This little table was his by right of precedence. He had been sitting at it the night before when the Englishman had elected to sit beside him; bowing as he did so in the Spanish manner, and clapping his hands in the way of Spain, to call the waiter when he was seated.

It was this evening the turn of the old man to bow, and the Englishman returned his salutation. They sat some time in silence, but when Cartoner passed the sugar the innate politeness of the Spaniard perceived the call for conversation.

“His Excellency is not of Seville?” he said, with a pleasant smile on his wrinkled, clean-shaven face.

“No; I am an Englishman.”

“Oh!”

The keen old face hardened suddenly, until the features were like the wrinkles of a walnut; and the Spaniard drew himself up with all the dignity of his race.

The quiet eyes of Cartoner of the Foreign Office never left his face. Cartoner was surprised; for he knew Spain--he was aware that the Peninsular War had not been forgotten. He had never, in whatsoever place or situation, found it expedient to conceal his nationality.

The old Spaniard slowly unfolded his cloak, betraying the shabbiness of its crimson plush lining. He lighted a cigarette, and then the national sense of politeness prevailed against personal feeling.

“His Excellency knows Gibraltar?”

“I have been there.”

“Nothing more?”

“Nothing more.”

“Pardon me,” said the old man, with a grave bow. “I thought--the Spanish of His Excellency misled me.”

The Englishman laughed quietly. “You took me for a scorpion,” he said. “I am not that. I learnt your language here and in the mountains of Andalusia.”

“Then, I beg the pardon of His Excellency.”

Cartoner made a Spanish gesture with his hand and shoulders, indicating that no such pardon was called for.

“Like you,” he said, “I do not love the Scorpion.”

The Spaniard's eyes lighted up with a gleam which was hardly pleasant to look upon.

“I HATE them,” he hissed, bringing his face close to the quiet eyes; and the Spanish word means more than ours.

Then he threw himself back in his chair with an upward jerk of the head.

“I have good reason to do so,” he added. “I sometimes wonder why I ever speak to an Englishman; for they resemble you in some things, these Scorpions. This one had a fair moustache, blue eyes, clean-cut features, like some of those from the North. But he was not large, this one--the Rock does not breed a large race. They are mean little men, with small white hands and women's feet. Ah, God! how I hate them all!”

The Englishman took a fresh cigarette from a Russia leather case, and pushed the remainder across the table for his companion to help himself when he had finished mashing the crooked paper between his lips.

“I know your language,” the Spaniard went on, “as well almost as you know mine. But I do not speak it now. It burns my throat--it hurts.”

Cartoner lighted his cigarette. He betrayed not the smallest feeling of curiosity. It was marvellous how he had acquired the manner of these self-contained Sons of the Peninsula.

“I will tell it.”

The Englishman leant his elbow on the table, and his chin within his hand, gazing indifferently out over the marble tables of the Cafe Carmona. The men seated there interchanged glances. They knew from the fierce old face, from the free and dramatic gestures, that old Pedro Roldos was already telling his story to the stranger.

“Santa Maria!” the old man was saying. “It is not a pleasant story. I lived at Algeciras--I and my little girl, Lorenza. Too near the Rock--too near the Rock. You know what we are there. I had a business--the contraband, of course--and sometimes I was absent for days together. But Lorenza was a favourite with the neighbours--good women who had known my wife when she was the beauty of St. Roque--just such a girl as Lorenza. And I trusted Lorenza; for we are all so. We trust and trust, and yet we know that love and money will kill honesty and truth at any moment. These two are sacred--more sacred than honesty or truth. Diavolo! What a fool I was. I ought to have known that Lorenza was too pretty to be left alone--ignorant as she was of the ways of the world.

“Then the neighbours began to throw out hints. They spoke of the English Caballero, who was so fond of riding round the Bay, and they hinted that it was not to see our old town of Algeciras that he came.

“One night I came home after a successful journey. I had been as far as Buceita with a train of five mules--a clear run. When I opened the door Lorenza was gone. Mother of God! gone--gone without a word! I went and fetched Nino--Nino, whose father had been my partner until he was shot by the Guardia Civile one night in the mountain behind Gaucin. There was no one like Nino for mule work in the mountains or for the handling of a boat when the west wind blew across the Bay. Nino, whom I wanted for a son-in-law, having no Nino of my own. I told him. He said nothing, but followed me to the quay and we got the boat out. In half an hour I was at the office of the Chief of the Police at Gibraltar. We sat there all night, Nino and I. By ten o'clock the next morning we knew that it was not one of the English officers--nor any civilian living on the Rock. 'It may,' said the Chief of Police, who seemed to know every one in his little district, 'be a passing stranger or--or a Scorpion. We do not know so much about them. We cannot penetrate to their houses.' I gave him a description of Lorenza; he undertook to communicate with England and with the Spanish police. And Nino and I went back to our work. It is thus with us poor people. Our hearts break--all that is worth having goes from our lives, and the end of it is the same; we go back to our work.”

The old man paused. His cigarette had gone out long ago. He relighted it and smoked fiercely in silence for some moments. Cartoner made a sign to the waiter, who, with the intelligence of his race, brought a decanter of the wine which he knew the Spaniard preferred.

During all the above relation Cartoner had never uttered a syllable. At the more violent points he had given a sympathetic little nod of the head--nothing more.

“It was from that moment that I began to learn the difference between Englishmen and Scorpions,” Pedro Roldos went on. “Up to then I had not known that it made a difference being born on the Rock or in England. I did not know what a Scorpion was--with all the vices of England and Spain in one undersized body. I haunted the Rock. I learnt English. All to no avail. Lorenza was gone. Nino never said anything--he merely stayed by my side--but I think that something--some fibre had broken within him while he held the sheet that first night, sailing across the Bay in a gale of wind.

“Thus--for a year. Then came a letter from Cadiz. Lorenza was there, alone with her child. Her husband had deserted her in England, and she had got back to Cadiz. We went to her, Nino and I, in our boat. We brought her back; but she was no longer Lorenza. Our grief, our love were nothing to her. She was like a woman hewn out of marble. Maria! how I hated that man! You cannot understand--you Englishmen. Though there is something in your eyes, senor, which makes me think that you too could have felt as I did.

“From Lorenza I learnt his name, and without telling her, I went across to Gibraltar. I inquired and found that he was there--there in Gibraltar. Almost within my grasp--think of that! At once I was cunning. For we are a simple people, except when we love or hate!”

“Yes,” said Cartoner, speaking for the first time. “I know.”

“In an hour I knew where he lived. His father was an English groom who had set up large breeding stables in Gibraltar, and was a rich man. The son had the pretension of being a gentleman. He had been in England they told me for a year, buying stud-horses--and--and something else. He was married. Ah-ha! He had been married three years before he ever saw Lorenza, and the ceremony which had been observed in the English Church at Seville was a farce. My heart was hot within me; hot with the hatred for this man, and I sat in the Cafe Universal, which you know! Yes, you know everything. I sat there thinking of how I should kill him--slowly, taking my own time--talking to him all the while.

“What I had learnt was no more than I expected. The woman (his wife), it appeared, was the daughter of a merchant at Gibraltar. They were a whole nest of Scorpions. I went back to Algeciras, and said nothing then to Lorenza. The next night I heard by chance that he and his wife and children had taken passage in a steamer that sailed for England in two days. Madre de Dio! he nearly slipped through our fingers. It was not a P. and O. ship: the passengers had to take a boat from the Old Mole, which is always crowded with Algeciras boats and others. Nino and I sailed across there and waited among the small craft. We saw the woman (his wife) and the children go on board in the afternoon. In the evening he came. I had arranged it with the licensed boatmen; a few pesetas did that. Our boat was nearest the steps. In the dim light of the quay lamp he noticed nothing, but stepped over the gunwale and mentioned the name of his steamer in a quick way, which he thought was that of the English.

“Nino took the oars, and when we were round the pier head we hoisted the sail. Then I spoke.

“'I am the father of Lorenza Roldos,' I said, 'and that man is Nino, her cortejo. We are going to kill you.'

“He started up, and was about to raise a cry, when Nino whipped out his country knife. We carry them, you know.”

“Yes,” said Cartoner, speaking for the second time, “I know.”

He was watching the old man now beneath the shadow of his hand.

“'If you raise your voice,' I said, 'Nino will put his knife through your throat.'

“I saw him glance sideways at the water.

“'You would have no chance that way,' I said; 'I would turn the boat on you, and run you down.'

“He gave a sort of gasp, and I had the happiness of hearing his teeth chatter.

“'I have money,' he said, in his thin, weak voice; 'not here, on board.'

“We said nothing, but I hauled in the sheet a little, and ran for the Europa light.

“'We are going to kill you,' I said quietly, without hurry.

“We landed just beyond the lighthouse, where there are no sentinels, and we made him walk up the Europa Road past the Governor's house. Nino's knife was within two inches of his throat all the while. I think he knew that his end was near. You know the Third Europa Advance Battery?”

“Yes,” answered Cartoner.

“The cliff recedes there. There is a drop of four hundred metres, and then deep water.”

“Yes, I know.”

“It was there,” hissed the old Spaniard, with a terrible gleam in his eyes. “We sat there on the low walk, and I spoke to him. As we came along, Nino had said to me in our dialect: 'With a man like this, fear is better than pain;' and I knew that he was right.

“We did not touch him with our knives. We merely spoke to him. And then we began quietly making our arrangements. That man died a hundred times in the ten minutes wherein we ballasted him. We tied heavy stones upon his body--we filled his pockets with smaller ones. We left his arms free, but to the palm of each hand we bound a stone as large as my head. The same to each foot.

“Then I said, 'Lie down! Hands and legs straight out! It is only right that a Scorpion should die from his own rock, and taking some souvenirs with him.'

“I took his arms and Nino his feet. We swung him three times, and let him fly into the darkness.

“And Lorenza never forgave us. She told me that she loved him still. One never comes to understand a woman!”

ON THE ROCKS

“For they are blest that have not much to rue--
That have not oft misheard the prompter's cue.”

The gale was apparently at its height--that is to say, it was blowing harder than it had blown all through the night. But those whose business is on the great waters know that a gale usually finishes its wrath in a few wild squalls. “'Tis getting puffy,” the sailors say; “'tis nearly over.”

A man hurrying through the narrow main street of Yport was thrown against the shutters of the little baker's shop on the left-hand side, and stood there gasping for breath.

“Mon Dieu!” he muttered. “It's a dog's night.”

And he wiped the rain from his face. The wind, which blew from a wild north-west, roared against the towering cliffs, and from east and west concentrated itself funnel-wise on the gap where Yport lies. Out seaward there was a queer, ghostly light lying on the face of the waters--the storm-light--and landsmen rarely see it. For the sea was beaten into unbroken foam. The man, who was clad in oilskins, was in the neck of the funnel. Overhead, he heard the wind roaring through the pines far up on the slope of the narrow valley--close at hand, a continuous whistle told of its passage across the housetops. The man steadied himself with his left hand. He had but one, and he cursed the empty sleeve which flapped across his face.

“Provided,” he muttered, “that I can waken that cure.”

He crept on, while the gale paused to take breath, and a moment later cowered in the porch of a little yellow house. He kicked the door with his heel and then waited, with his ear to the great keyhole. Surely the cure must have been a good man to sleep in such a night. The street had naturally been deserted, for it was nearly three o'clock in the morning, and dawn could not be far off.

“A one-armed man and a priest!” said the man to himself, with an expressive jerk of the head. And, indeed, all the men of Yport had sailed for the Northern fisheries, leaving the village to the women and children, and the maimed.

Within the house there were sounds of some one astir.

“One comes!” cried a cheery voice belonging assuredly to some one who was brave, for none expects to be called from his bed to hear good news. A single bolt was drawn and the door thrown open. The cure--a little man--stood back, shading the candle with his hand.

“Ah, Jean Belfort! it is you.”

“Yes, I and my one arm,” replied the man, coming in and closing the door. The rain dripped from his oilskins to the clean floor.

“Ah, but this is no night to complain. Better be on shore with one arm than at sea with two to-night.”

The little cure looked at his visitor with bright eyes, and a shake of the head. A quick-spoken man this, with a little square mouth, a soft heart, a keen sense of humour.

“Why have you got me from my bed, malcontent?” he asked.

“Because there are some out there that want your prayers,” replied Belfort, jerking his head towards the sea. He was an unbeliever, this maimed sailor, who read the Petit Journal, and talked too loudly in the Cafe de la Marine of an evening. He spoke mockingly now.

“One can pray in the morning. Come with me while I get on some clothes--if it is a wreck,” said the priest, simply.

The man followed him to a little bare room, of which the walls were decorated by two cheap sacred prints and a crucifix, such as may be bought for ten sous at any fair on the coast.