n looking at the speaker wonderingly, not understanding
a word. Dan turned to him impatiently.

"Get out!" he said. He pushed the man, searching his brain for the
Spanish equivalent. "What the mischief--oh," he glared at the
trembling prisoner. "_Vayase Vd! Largo de aqui!_"

The poor wretch needed no more. With a quick, smiling gleam of white
teeth he bowed, and the next instant was loping through the garden.
Dan sauntered slowly toward the hotel. Soldiers acting upon
information given by Miss Howland were beating the grounds, and there
was much shouting and occasionally a pistol shot.

But the hotel was deserted of the brilliant guests who had filled it
but a quarter of an hour before. The spell of darkness lay upon the
banquet hall. A few men and women were loitering in the court,
awaiting developments. Oddington was there, and another man of the
party, but the rest, including the Howlands, had evidently gone to
their rooms.

"Miss Howland told us you made rather an interesting tackle,
Merrithew," said Oddington as Dan nodded to him. "I am sorry I missed
it. Where is your prisoner?"

Dan smiled. "The tackle was so artistic," he said, "that I jarred most
of my senses out of me. He got away. Here's his gun," and Dan held up
an old-fashioned carbine.

Oddington glanced at the weapon.

"Howland will be sorry you let your man escape, if only because he
prevented the carefully prepared speech he had been laboring over. It
was pretty nervy of you, although Howland tells me they are all the
time potting at Rodriguez and missing him. Still, I should think they
would give you the Order of San Blanco."

"I think I can struggle along without it," said Dan. "Good-night."

He turned toward the harbor and the _Tampico_. The moon had now broken
from the clouds which had partially hidden it all evening, and the
hotel grounds and the slope leading to the water front were bathed in
light. Dan's mood was rather bitter. They might have waited for him,
he thought. At least, Miss Howland and her father might have, in view
of what had happened. But still, why should they? The old feeling of
aloofness filled him, and all the self-assurance which had
characterized his attitude with Miss Howland a half-hour before
vanished. He was angry with himself for having dared to maintain such
an attitude.

He turned to look at the hotel and bowed gravely.

"It seems that one Daniel Merrithew has been forgetting he i