razy, for the newcomer thus obsequiously
presented looked to be a species of ancient vagabond.

"Well, what is it?" the President asked, frowning heavily. He was
curiously irritated. "Stay," he interposed, "those dusty, muddy rags you
have on, that green and red, that's not a Republican uniform?"

"It's of the Batallon del Emperador," replied the stranger, unabashed.

"Bless me the saints! Well, well, well, I suppose you, too, want to save
your Maximilian. But how does it happen that you're not under guard
yourself?"

For answer the old man came nearer. He limped feebly, and the while he
unbuttoned his coarse red jacket. Juarez watched him sluggishly, but
with a hand upon a revolver under the papers on his desk. The stranger,
however, drew forth nothing more sensational than five or six square
bits of parchment. Yet these aroused the President more than a weapon
could have done. They were blank, except at the bottom, and there the
President read his own signature, "Benito Juarez, Libertad y Reforma."

"Your--Your Excellency remembers?"

"How well!" The admission came involuntarily. Juarez was laboring under
an emotion that he could not at first control. He stared at his visitor
in a new wonder. So gaunt, so hollow, so utterly insignificant! The
President's wonder grew.

"You--you gained entrance here by one of these slips?" he questioned
sharply. The old man nodded. "And it was countersigned by----"

"Si senor, by El Chaparrito. The slip said, 'Admit bearer at once.'"

"Then I cannot blame my orderly! But who are you?"

"Anastasio Murguia, to serve Your Mercy."

"Bien, Senor Murguia, and now will you explain what no other messenger
from our unknown friend has done? Who--who is El Chaparrito?"

But, like the wretched messengers who had gone before, Anastasio Murguia
only shrugged his shoulders blankly. "Your Excellency does not know El
Chaparrito?" he asked. "And yet you trusted him, a stranger, with your
signature?"

There was a crafty stress on his words.

"Ah, senor," Juarez placidly inquired, "what if a chief magistrate did
not know when to trust? You are to be informed, then, that one year ago
last October, at Chihuahua, I was saved from a French flying column by
an Indito. The poor wretch had run across the desert with his warning.
But he could prove nothing. He couldn't even tell who sent him, except
that it was a short gentleman, a senor chaparro. Yet it was well for the
Republic that I took his w