ent, that beyond, where the mountains
were, all this world changed, yet changed to another as strange and
vast. And that still farther on there stretched yet other regions, and
each one different, and each no less marvelous and grand. A bewildering
prodigality of Nature, spelling the little word "romance"! Jacqueline's
lip quivered as she gazed and imagined, and as the poetry of it filled
her soul. But of a sudden the little woman sighed. It was a sigh of
rebellion. And just here the politics leaped forth, inspired of the wild
thrilling beauty of the world.

"To think," she half cried, "that we are losing this--all this! And yet
we have won it! Mon Dieu, have we not won it? Yet for whom, alas?
Maximilian?--Faw, an ungrateful puppet such as that, to have, to take
from us, such as--this! Now suppose," her lips formed the unuttered
words, while her gray eyes closed to a narrowing cunning, "just suppose
that we--that someone--reminds His Majesty how ingratitude falls short
of courtesy between emperors."

The boy's thoughts were of the country he had lost. Those of the
resplendent and wayward butterfly were of an empire she meant to gain.
But in her, who might suspect the consummate diplomat? Even then she was
speaking to Murguia, asking if it were not time that Fra Diavolo
remembered his engagements. Driscoll heard the query, and his comment
was a mental shrug of the shoulders.

CHAPTER IX

TOLL-TAKING IN THE HUASTECA

"And when he came bold Robin before,
Robin asked him courteously,
'O, hast thou any money to spare,
For my merry men and me?'"
--_Robin Hood._

For all his campaigner's instincts, the first of Driscoll's expected
troubles came and was gone before he knew that it was trouble. It
arrived so naturally, and was so well behaved! With a stop for a bowl of
coffee at a roadside fonda, they had been traveling for perhaps five
hours, when Driscoll saw the heads of two horses and their riders over
the brush, and at a turn in the trail he found that they were coming
leisurely toward him. He observed them suspiciously, and wistfully. The
wild tropics around him had quite won his heart as peculiarly adapted to
violent amusements of a desperate tinge, far more so really than his own
Missouri woodlands. Yet thus far the uneventful tameness had depressed
him as a shameful waste of environment.

To boot all, here was this brace of villainous, well-armed Mexicans not
giving t