ng the
ancient man. "Bah, Murguia, you would haggle over a little risk as
though it were some poor Confederate's last bale of cotton. But I--por
Dios, I get tired of the mountains. And then I come to Tampico. Yet you
ask why I come? Bien, senor mio, this is why." A gesture explained. Fra
Diavolo unctuously rubbed his thumb over his fingers. The meaning of the
gesture was, "Money!"

The old man recognized the pantomime and shivered. He shrank into his
long black coat as though right willingly he would shrink away
altogether. His parsimony extended even to speech. He pursued his
fugitive voice into the depths of the voluminous coat and there clutched
it as a coin in a chest. Then he paid it out as though it were a coin
indeed.

"But----" he stammered.

"No buts," the fierce ranchero growled thunderously. "Not one, Don
Anastasio, not while our country bleeds under the Austrian tyrant's
heel, not while there yet breathes a patriot to scorn peril and death,
so only that he get the sinews of war."

The curiously unctuous gesture grew menacing, brutal. Don Anastasio
twitched and trembled before it. Under the towering and prismatic Fra
Diavolo he cowered, an insignificant figure. The unrelieved black of his
attire accorded with his meagre frame. It was secretive, miserly. A
black stock covered a withered collar. A dingy silk tile was tightly
packed over a rusted black wig. Boots hid their tops under the skirts of
his coat, and the coat in turn was partly concealed under a black shawl.
But there was one incongruous item. Boots, coat, hat and all were
crusted with brine. He had evidently passed through salty spray, had
braved the deep, this shrinking old man in frayed black. Just now his
eyes, normally moist and avaricious, were parched dry by fear, as though
a flame had passed over them. They might have rattled in their gaping
sockets. Fear also helped him clutch his voice, which he paid out
regardless of expense.

"You know, Don----" But Fra Diavolo scowled, and the name died on his
lips. "You know," he went on, "why you haven't seen me for so long. It's
the blockade up there. It's closer than ever now. This time I waited
many nights for a chance to run in, and as many more to run out again."

"And you squeezed the poor devils all the harder for your weevily corn
and shoddy boots?"

Jacqueline, who could not hear a word, told her companions with a
child's expectancy only to wait and they would see Fra Diavolo eat up
t