his men crept up here, late some night,
with pistols or knives, and finished us before we had time to
wake up, do you imagine that any one hereabouts would dare to
make any report of the matter? Would our fate ever reach the
outside world?"

"It would be sure to, in time, I believe," Tom answered, thoughtfully.

"How?"

"That I can't tell. But I believe in the invariable triumph of
right, no matter how great the odds against it may seem."

"Let right triumph, after we're buried," continued Harry, "and
what good would it do us?"

"None, in any ordinary material sense. Yet good would come to
the world through our fate, even if only in proclaiming, once
more, the sure defeat of all wicked plans in the end."

Harry said no more, just then. Tom Reade, who ordinarily was
intensely practical, was also the kind of young man who could
perish for an ideal, if need be. Tom went outside, stretching
himself on the grass under a tree. He sighed for a book, but
there was none, so he lay staring off over the valley below.

Twenty minutes later Harry, after trying vainly to take a nap
on a cot in the tent, followed his chum outside.

"Odd, isn't it, Tom?" questioned Hazelton. "We're living what
looks like a wholly free life. Nothing to prevent us from tramping
anywhere we please on these hills, and yet we know to a certainty
that we wouldn't be able to get twenty miles from here before
soldiers would have us nabbed, and marching away to a prison from
which, very likely, no one in the outside world would ever hear
of us again."

"It is queer," agreed Tom, nodding. "Oh, just for one glimpse
of Yankee soil!"

"Twice," went on Harry, "we've even persuaded Nicolas to bribe
some native to take a letter from us, to be mailed at some distant
point. After two or three days Don Luis, in each instance, has
come here, and, with a smile, has shown us our own intercepted
letter. Yet Nicolas has been honest in the matter, beyond a doubt.
It is equally past question that the native whom Nicolas has
trusted and paid has made an honest attempt to get away and post
our letter; but always the cunning of a Montez overtakes the trusted
messenger."

"And one can only guess what has happened to the messengers,"
Tom said, soberly. "Undoubtedly both of the two poor fellows
are now passing the days _incommunicado_. It makes a fellow a
bit heartsick, doesn't it, chum, to think of the probable fates
of two men who have tried to serve