ion was up to his neck in a revolutionary plot
which was soon to burst; that the steamship line, because of interests
of its own which a change of government would advance, had agreed to
regard the rifles in the hold as agricultural implements, and that Mr.
Rodman was among the most expert of traveling salesmen for revolutions
and organizers of _juntas_. To all that knowledge, he must then have
added the quality of prophecy. It is certain, however, that, had he
noted the other's interest in himself and coupled with that interest
the coincidence that the initials of the furtive gentleman's name on
the purser's list were "H. S. R.," he would have slept still more
brokenly.

If he had not looked Mr. Rodman up on the list, Mr. Rodman had not
been equally delinquent. The name Robert A. Saxon had by no means
escaped his attention.

CHAPTER IX

Puerto Frio sits back of its harbor, a medley of corrugated iron
roofs, adobe walls and square-towered churches. Along the water front
is a fringe of ragged palms. At one end of the semicircle that breaks
the straight coast line, a few steamers come to anchorage; at the
other rise jugged groups of water-eaten rocks, where the surf runs
with a cannonading of breakers, and tosses back a perpetual lather of
infuriated spray. From the mole, Saxon had his first near view of the
city. He drew a long inhalation of the hot air, and looked anxiously
about him.

He had been asking himself during the length of his journey whether a
reminder would be borne in on his senses, and awaken them to a throb
of familiarity. He had climbed the slippery landing stairs with the
oppressing consciousness that he might step at their top into a new
world--or an old and forgotten world. Now, he drew to one side, and
swept his eyes questioningly about.

Before him stretched a broad open space, through which the dust
swirled hot and indolent. Beyond lay the Plaza of Santo Domingo, and
on the twin towers of its church two crosses leaned dismally askew. A
few barefooted natives slouched across the sun-refracting square,
their shadows blue against the yellow heat. Saxon's gaze swung
steadily about the radius of sight, but his brain, like a paralyzed
nerve, touched with the testing-electrode, gave no reflex--no
response.

There was a leap at his heart which became hope as his cab jolted on
to the Hotel Frances y Ingles over streets that awoke no convicting
memories. He set out almost cheerfully for the