came the straggling file of burros and pack horses.

Yet the American was as a solitary traveller leaving a town for the
wilderness at the first touch of dawn. The road soon narrowed down to a
trail as it wound through the undergrowth of the Huasteca lowlands, then
westward toward a bluish line of mountains. At each cross trail the
American would turn in his saddle to force an indication of their course
from Murguia. Then on he would ride again, the while sinking deeper and
deeper into his thoughts; thoughts of why he had come, of how he might
succeed, and of the Surrender at that moment perhaps a fact. For him,
though, there was his sabre yet, dangling there under his leg. And there
were the sabres of comrades that likewise would not be given up, for to
save them that shame was he in Mexico. Riding there, so much alone, and
lonely, he was a rough, savage, military figure. But in his meditations,
so grave and unwonted in the wild, hard-riding trooper lad, there was
nothing to indicate a second nature in him, an instinct that was on the
alert against every leafy clump and cactus and mesh of vine.

CHAPTER VIII

THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH MAY BE PRODIGIOUSLY LONG THOUGHTS

"And many a Knot unravell'd by the Road;
But not the Master-Knot of Human Fate."
--_Omar._

Another young person, Jacqueline herself, was also pondering rather
soberly this morning. And her thoughts fitted as oddly with her piquant,
lightsome, cynical youth as the gloomily patriotic ones of the Storm
Centre did with his youth, which was robust and boyish and
swashbuckling. To judge from the way their brains worked now, both young
people might have been grave wielders of state affairs, instead of the
lad and the lass so heartily and pettily scorning each other a short
hour before.

Yes, the great rugged Missourian had his disdain too, and for none other
than the darling beauty of two imperial courts. The beauty would have
been vastly amused, no doubt, had she known of the phenomenon. But
knowing a little more, such as its source and the man himself, she must
have flushed and drooped, piteously hurt, as none in her own circle
could have wounded her. The shafts which flashed in that circle were
keenly barbed. They were the more merciless for being politely gilded.
But she understood, and despised, the point of view there. It was a dais
of velvet, of scarlet velvet. And a worldly little gentlewoman like th