nces, when the door
again opened and the Baron Fagoni entered, relocked the door, put the
key in his pocket and, standing before his prisoner with folded arms,
gazed at him intently from beneath his sombrero.

Martin could not stand this. "Sir," said he, starting up, "if this is a
joke, you have carried it far enough; and if you really detain me here a
prisoner, every feeling of honour ought to deter you from adding insult
to injury."

To this sternly delivered speech the Baron made no reply, but springing
suddenly upon Martin, he grasped him in his powerful arms and crushed
him to his broad chest till he almost broke every bone in his body!

"Och! cushla, bliss yer young face! sure it's yersilf, an' no mistake!
Kape still, Martin, dear. Let me look at ye, darlint! Ah! then, isn't
it my heart that's been broken for months an' months past about ye?"

Reader, it would be utterly in vain for me to attempt to describe either
the words that flowed from the lips of Martin Rattler and Barney
O'Flannagan on this happy occasion, or the feelings that filled their
swelling hearts. The speechless amazement of Martin, the ejaculatory
exclamations of the Baron Fagoni, the rapid questions and brief replies,
are all totally indescribable. Suffice it to say that for full quarter
of an hour they exclaimed, shouted, and danced round each other, without
coming to any satisfactory knowledge of how each had got to the same
place, except that Barney at last discovered that Martin had travelled
there by chance, and he had reached the mines by "intuition." Having
settled this point, they sobered down a little.

"Now Martin, darlint," cried the Irishman, throwing aside his hat for
the first time, and displaying his well-known jolly visage, of which the
forehead, eyes, and nose alone survived the general inundation of red
hair, "ye'll be hungry, I've small doubt, so sit ye down, lad, to
supper, and you'll tell me yer story as ye go along, and afther that
I'll tell ye mine, while I smoke my pipe,--the ould cutty, boy, that has
comed through fire and wather, sound as a bell and blacker than iver!"

The Baron held up the well-known instrument of fumigation, as he spoke,
in triumph.

Supper was superb. There were venison steaks, armadillo cutlets, tapir
hash, iguana pie, and an immense variety of fruits and vegetables, that
would have served a dozen men, besides cakes and splendid coffee.

"You live well here, Barney--I beg pardon--Bar