e time. We might make another move and try to
shoulder our way through until the knives appear and then----"

He was interrupted by a movement in the crowd. The men fell back to
make a path for a tall, lank figure who stepped forward with some show
of dignity. Both Wilson and Stubbs exclaimed with one breath:

"The Priest!"

To Wilson he was the man who had tried to kill him in the dark, the
man again whom he in his turn had tried to kill. He reached for his
holster, but he saw that even now the man did not recognize him. The
priest, however, had detected the movement.

"There are too many of us," he smiled, raising a warning finger. "But
no harm is meant."

Save for the second or two he had seen him during the fight, this was
the first time Wilson had ever had an opportunity to study the man
closely. He was puzzled at first by some look in the man's face which
haunted him as though it bore some resemblance to another face. It did
not seem to be any one feature,--he had never before seen in anyone
such eyes; piercing, troubled dark eyes, moving as though never at
ease; he had never seen in anyone such thin, tight lips drawn over the
teeth as in a man with pain. The nose was normal enough and the
cheek-bones high, but the whole expression of the face was one of
anxious intensity, of fanatical ardor, with, shadowing it all, an air
of puzzled uncertainty. Everything about the man was more or less of a
jumbled paradox; he was dressed like a priest, but he looked like a
man of the world; he was clearly a native in thought and action, but
he looked more like an American. He stared at Stubbs as though
bewildered and unable to place him. Then his face cleared.

"Where is your master?" he demanded.

"The cap'n?" growled Stubbs, anything but pleased at the form and
manner of the question. "I'm not his keeper and no man is my master."

"Does he live?"

Briefly Wilson told of what had been done with Danbury. The Priest
listened with interest. Then he asked:

"And your mission here?"

Before Wilson could frame a reply, the Priest waved his hand
impatiently to the crowd which melted away.

"Come with me," he said. "I am weary and need to rest a little."

The Priest preceded them through the village and to an adobe hut which
stood at a little distance from the other houses and was further
distinguished by being surrounded by green things. It was a
story-and-a-half-high structure, thatched with straw.

On the way Wils