ose flask is that?" Tiburcio demanded, pointing to where it had been
tossed and forgotten. The prisoner's. "Look that over again," Tiburcio
insisted. A guard handed it to Lopez, who squinted inside. "There is
nothing," he said. It was only an old canteen whose leather covering was
dropping apart from rot.

Murguia's head raised, and his eyes fixed themselves on the judge, and
in their intense fixity glittered a quick, keen lust. It was hideous,
loathsome, fascinating. The eyes were swimming in tears, but their
hungered, metal-like sheen made the sorrow monstrous, and was the more
foul and ghastly because it distorted so pure a thing as sorrow.
Driscoll felt queerly that he must, must remove from the world this
decrepit old man who bemoaned a dead child. The itch for murder
terrified him, and he turned away angrily from the horrid face that
aroused it. But Murguia's stare never relaxed while Lopez toyed with the
canteen. And when Lopez, as though accidentally, thrust a finger under
the torn leather and brought out a folded paper, the bright points of
Murguia's eyes leaped to flame. But the head went down again, as once
more his grief swept over him, and another sob caught at the
heartstrings of every man there.

Lopez spread out the paper, and as he read, he started violently. He
passed it on to the Austrian and the color sergeant, and they also
started. But the most amazed was Driscoll, when he too had a chance to
read.

"Ha, you recognize it?" exclaimed the president.

"Sure I do. It's an order from Colonel Dupin to Captain Maurel. Rodrigo
had it in Tampico, making people think that _he_ was Captain
Maurel."

But the court was not so simple. "How came you by it?" demanded Lopez.
"Have occasion to be Maurel yourself sometime, eh?"

With wrath, with admiration, Driscoll faced round on Don Anastasio. "Oh
you pesky, shriveled-up gorilla!" he breathed. He was no longer amazed.
This accounted for Murguia's borrowing his flask the night they were in
the forest. It accounted for Murguia and Rodrigo plotting together in
Tampico. But why tell such things to the court? The Missourian was not a
fool like King Canute, who ordered back the waves. "Hurry up," he said
wearily to the waves instead. Since he could not hold the tide,
anticipation chilled more than the drowning bath itself.

The tide assuredly did not wait. It rolled right on, nearer and nearer.
Murguia was lifted to his feet. He was remembering already what Lopez