ite the type you'd expect to see
here, did they?"

"Oh, there's every type here," she replied lightly. She turned her eyes
away from Harboro. There was something in his face which troubled her. She
could not bear to see him with that expression of wounded sensibilities
and rebellious pride in his eyes. And she had understood everything.

She did not break in upon his thoughts soon. She would have liked to
divert his mind, but she felt like a culprit who realizes that words are
often betrayers.

And so they walked in silence up that narrow bit of street which connects
the bridge with Piedras Negras, and leads you under the balcony of what
used to be the American Consul's house, and on past the _cuartel_, where
the imprisoned soldiers are kept. Here, of course, the street broadens and
skirts the plaza where the band plays of an evening, and where the town
promenades round and round the little square of palms and fountains, under
the stars. You may remember that a little farther on, on one side of the
plaza, there is the immense church which has been building for a century,
more or less, and which is still incomplete.

There were a few miserable-looking soldiers, with shapeless, colorless
uniforms, loitering in front of the _cuartel_ as Harboro and Sylvia
passed.

The indefinably sinister character of the building affected Sylvia. "What
is it?" she asked.

"It's where the republic keeps a body of its soldiers," explained Harboro.
"They're inside--locked up."

They were both glad to sit down on one of the plaza benches for a few
minutes; they did so by a common impulse, without speaking.

"It's the first time I ever thought of prisoners having what you'd call an
honorable profession," Sylvia said slowly. She gazed at the immense, low
structure with troubled eyes. Flags fluttered from the ramparts at
intervals, but they seemed oddly lacking in gallantry or vitality.

"It's a barbarous custom," said Harboro shortly. He was still thinking of
that incident on the bridge.

"And yet ... you might think of them as happy, living that way."

"Good gracious! Happy?"

"They needn't care about how they are to be provided for--and they have
their duties."

"But they're _prisoners_, Sylvia!"

"Yes, prisoners.... Aren't we all prisoners, somehow? I've sometimes
thought that none of us can do just what we'd like to do, or come or go
freely. We think we're free, as oxen in a treadmill think of themselves as
being free, I s