, and get whatever you need to carry with you. We will
see you safely to the coast."

As they entered the hall, and were ascending the great marble stairway,
Hope and her groom, who had followed in the rear of the cavalry, came
running to meet them. "I got in by the back way," Hope explained.
"The streets there are all deserted. How can I help you?" she asked,
eagerly.

"By leaving me," cried the older woman. "Good God, child, have I not
enough to answer for without dragging you into this? Go home at once
through the botanical garden, and then by way of the wharves. That
part of the city is still empty."

"Where are your servants; why are they not here?" Hope demanded without
heeding her. The palace was strangely empty; no footsteps came running
to greet them, no doors opened or shut as they hurried to Madame
Alvarez's apartments. The servants of the household had fled at the
first sound of the uproar in the city, and the dresses and ornaments
scattered on the floor told that they had not gone empty-handed. The
woman who had accompanied Madame Alvarez to the review sank weeping on
the bed, and then, as the shouts grew suddenly louder and more near,
ran to hide herself in the upper stories of the house. Hope crossed to
the window and saw a great mob of soldiers and citizens sweep around
the corner and throw themselves against the iron fence of the palace.
"You will have to hurry," she said. "Remember, you are risking the
lives of those boys by your delay."

There was a large bed in the room, and Madame Alvarez had pulled it
forward and was bending over a safe that had opened in the wall, and
which had been hidden by the head board of the bed. She held up a
bundle of papers in her hand, wrapped in a leather portfolio. "Do you
see these?" she cried, "they are drafts for five millions of dollars."
She tossed them back into the safe and swung the door shut.

"You are a witness. I do not take them," she said.

"I don't understand," Hope answered, "but hurry. Have you everything
you want--have you your jewels?"

"Yes," the woman answered, as she rose to her feet, "they are mine."

A yell more loud and terrible than any that had gone before rose from
the garden below, and there was the sound of iron beating against iron,
and cries of rage and execration from a great multitude.

"I will not go!" the Spanish woman cried, suddenly. "I will not leave
Alvarez to that mob. If they want to kill me, let them kil