God's sake, what are you doing?
Come back!"

The Englishman started at the sound of his friend's voice, but he did
not turn his head. He began to descend the stairs slowly, a step at a
time, staring at the mob so fiercely that they shrank back before the
look of wounded pride and anger in his eyes. Those in the rear raised
and levelled their rifles. Without taking his eyes from theirs, Stuart
drew his revolver, and with his sword swinging from its wrist-strap,
pointed his weapon at the mass below him.

"What does this mean?" he demanded. "Is this mutiny?"

A voice from the rear of the crowd of men shrieked: "Death to the
Spanish woman. Death to all traitors. Long live Mendoza," and the
others echoed the cry in chorus.

Clay sprang down the broad stairs calling, "Come to me;" but before he
could reach Stuart, a woman's voice rang out, in a long terrible cry of
terror, a cry that was neither a prayer nor an imprecation, but which
held the agony of both. Stuart started, and looked up to where Madame
Alvarez had thrown herself toward him across the broad balustrade of
the stairway. She was silent with fear, and her hand clutched at the
air, as she beckoned wildly to him. Stuart stared at her with a
troubled smile and waved his empty hand to reassure her. The movement
was final, for the men below, freed from the reproach of his eyes,
flung up their carbines and fired, some wildly, without placing their
guns at rest, and others steadily and aiming straight at his heart.

As the volley rang out and the smoke drifted up the great staircase,
the subaltern's hands tossed high above his head, his body sank into
itself and toppled backward, and, like a tired child falling to sleep,
the defeated soldier of fortune dropped back into the outstretched arms
of his friend.

Clay lifted him upon his knee, and crushed him closer against his
breast with one arm, while he tore with his free hand at the stock
about the throat and pushed his fingers in between the buttons of the
tunic. They came forth again wet and colored crimson.

"Stuart!" Clay gasped. "Stuart, speak to me, look at me!" He shook the
body in his arms with fierce roughness, peering into the face that
rested on his shoulder, as though he could command the eyes back again
to light and life. "Don't leave me!" he said. "For God's sake, old
man, don't leave me!"

But the head on his shoulder only sank the closer and the body
stiffened in his arms. Clay ra