ord and fled. Later, when I reached the Rio
Grande, and he wanted my signature to some blank squares of parchment,
which he was to take back to his senor chaparro--well, senor, I trusted
again. That Indito in breech-clout obtained my autograph some twenty
times over."

The President, however, might have added that every Republican officer
was advised first to test any warning on any bit of parchment signed
"Benito Juarez." Yet, as a matter of fact, there came to be such magic
in the name of El Chaparrito that the name of Juarez thereto was only
needed as a guarantee that the lesser name was genuine.

"Now, then, Senor Emissary," said the President, "what danger hangs over
our Republic this time?"

"None, senor. I return the parchment squares left over. El--El
Chaparrito has no more thoughts for the Republic. He thinks," and
Murguia ground his knuckles into the desk top, "he thinks of no one, of
no one--except Maximilian! And he has never thought of aught else. The
Republic? Bah, the Republic was only his tool, Senor Presidente. Only
his tool, but the tool needed sharpening. They say that's the way with
the guillotine, eh, Senor Presidente?"

"But hombre--No, our unseen friend of the Republic, our Chaparrito,
would not ask for Maximilian's pardon?"

"_Pardon!_"--It was fairly a cry of rage--"Yet you, Senor
Presidente, _you_ postpone the execution! _You_ mean to pardon
him!"

"Indeed?"

"Yes, I--I think so. But you shall not, Senor Presidente. I come to,
to----"

"Now that's curious. Possibly I, too, am to be sharpened into a kind of
guillotine, eh, senor?"

"All the others were," Murguia returned stubbornly. "That is, all except
one."

"Ha, then El Chaparrito found one man who was incorruptible?"

"Yes. But still Your Excellency is mistaken. El Chaparrito did not use
money to win his agents. That, senor, is the unsafest way of all."

"You would tell me, senor, that El Chaparrito had a safe way?"

"Yes, and it was absolute. He awakened memory, the memory, Senor
Presidente, of wrongs. For example, there was Your Excellency's savior
in breech-clout. He once lived in a forest village down in the Huasteca.
One night Dupin came and burned the huts, and the Indito's family
perished with other women and children there. That village alone gave
the Chaparrito many another messenger or spy, but memories left by the
Empire were plentiful enough everywhere, and cheap. The Chaparrito
simply drafted them, that was all