ed the Mexican boy. "It is not my way
to strike the innocent in order to reach the guilty."

"I believe you, Felipe. You did not even wish to strike me if you could
frighten me into giving you what you thought to be your just due. I
learned that the night you stole into the room where I slept at the home
of Warren Hatch and tried to shake my nerve by pressing your knife
against my throat."

"But nothing could frighten you," said Felipe. "You told me then I would
not kill. I am glad now that I did not. I shall never cease to be glad."

"Not even when Bantry Hagan again finds an opportunity to talk to you?
Hagan is slick, and he has a seductive tongue."

"Thanks for the compliment, me boy," said a voice at the door, and a
stout, florid man stepped heavily into the room.

"Senor Hagan!" cried Felipe.

"The same, me lad," was the cool answer. "I thought I'd come to see how
you were coming on, and this is the first time I could see ye. I find
you have a visitor already. It's slick he calls me, but I'll bet me life
he's been playing a slick game of his own with ye. Careful, me lad, or
he'll have that document in his fingers, and never again will you see it
at all."

"He has it now!" exclaimed the Mexican boy defiantly. "I gave it to
him."

"Then it's too late I came. A poor fool you are, Felipe!"

The patient became greatly excited and rose to a sitting position,
crying:

"Go you away! I want to see you no more! I will not listen to you!"

Hagan surveyed Merriwell.

"How you do it I can't say," he confessed; "but you have the trick of
making friends of any who may give you trouble. It's proud I am to say
you can't fool Bantry Hagan and turn his backbone to jelly. Del Norte is
dead, but Hagan is alive, and he'll keep you on the jump for a while."

Frank stepped past Hagan to the door. Looking out into the long
corridor, he called a young doctor who happened to be passing.

"Doctor," he said, "a serious mistake has happened here. Take a look at
this man who has forced his way in here. He is no friend of the patient,
and you can see for yourself that the patient is greatly excited and
wrought up by his intrusion. For the sake of the patient, will you see
that this man leaves at once, that he is observed at the door, and that
instructions are given to refuse him admittance if he has the cheek to
call again."

"Take him away! Take him away!" cried Jalisco.

Immediately the doctor addressed Hagan.

"I think yo