d the leaders, and the third limped close behind. But one of
the first two held a pistol ever near the heart of his companion, who
was wrapped to the eyes in a Spanish cloak.

"Who goes----" cried an Imperialist sentry.

"Your colonel, fool!" he of the cloak stopped him short. "I, Miguel
Lopez. I am changing the guard. Return now to your barracks and get what
sleep you can before morning. One of these men with me will take your
place."

In like manner each later challenge was satisfied, and so on to a
cannon-battered crevice in the wall. The spectres passed through the gap
there into a field of graves on the mound's level summit. The earth had
an uncanny softness under their tread. The plots were mostly fresh, of
slain Imperialists still keeping their rank according to battalion. But
the living, the Reserve Brigade, were here as well, sleeping over the
dead. They stirred and grumbled at being disturbed, but thought then no
more of the intruders. The secret plans for the daybreak attack
explained everything. Their colonel, whose voice they knew, was shifting
forces in preparation. But when the dawn came, they awoke to find their
weapons gone, and themselves defenseless prisoners.

Many of the spectral troop fell away to hold the cemetery, but the rest
kept on, and entered the monastery garden. Here there was a battery of
one gun, whose muzzle pointed the way to the Republican camp. Without a
sound the Imperialist gunners were replaced by Republicans. The cannon
was one captured during the Cimatario fight. It was called "La
Tempestad," and bore an inscription, "The Last Argument of Nations." Its
new possessors turned the muzzle squarely on the monastery, not fifty
yards away, where Maximilian lay then asleep.

The shadowy host did not linger in the monastery itself. They swept
through hastily, in at the garden entrance, along the corridor, and out
by the great portico door upon La Cruz Plaza. They had passed the
citadel. The town lay before them. But in the Plaza were more cannon,
which had been taken from the trenches and massed for the supreme
effort. They lay silent, under the silent bells of the church. They lay
under the giant Cross of the Apparition, which was adorned by the
Inditos with garlands in vague memory of pagan rites on that very spot.
They lay under the splendid Arabian palms. They lay among defenders. To
take them was like prowling with a torch among broken casks of
gunpowder. Not a shot must be fir