hat drag--"

The lady interrupted him with a weary gesture.

"There is no need to continue your insults," she said, coldly.
"I do not understand what you are saying, nor do I know what mad
blunder you are making; but if the inspection of the contents of
a gentleman's portmanteau will rid me of you, let us delay it no
longer."

She passed quickly and noiselessly into the other room, and returned
with the heavy leather valise, which she handed to the American with
an air of patient contempt.

Goodwin set the valise quickly upon the table and began to unfasten
the straps. The lady stood by, with an expression of infinite scorn
and weariness upon her face.

The valise opened wide to a powerful, sidelong wrench. Goodwin
dragged out two or three articles of clothing, exposing the bulk of
its contents--package after package of tightly packed United States
bank and treasury notes of large denomination. Reckoning from the
high figures written upon the paper bands that bound them, the total
must have come closely upon the hundred thousand mark.

Goodwin glanced swiftly at the woman, and saw, with surprise and a
thrill of pleasure that he wondered at, that she had experienced
an unmistakable shock. Her eyes grew wide, she gasped, and leaned
heavily against the table. She had been ignorant, then, he inferred,
that her companion had looted the government treasury. But why, he
angrily asked himself, should he be so well pleased to think this
wandering and unscrupulous singer not so black as report had painted
her?

A noise in the other room startled them both. The door swung open,
and a tall, elderly, dark complexioned man, recently shaven, hurried
into the room.

All the pictures of President Miraflores represent him as the
possessor of a luxuriant supply of dark and carefully tended
whiskers; but the story of the barber, Esteban, had prepared Goodwin
for the change.

The man stumbled in from the dark room, his eyes blinking at the
lamplight, and heavy from sleep.

"What does this mean?" he demanded in excellent English, with a keen
and perturbed look at the American--"robbery?"

"Very near it," answered Goodwin. "But I rather think I'm in time to
prevent it. I represent the people to whom this money belongs, and
I have come to convey it back to them." He thrust his hand into a
pocket of his loose, linen coat.

The other man's hand went quickly behind him.

"Don't draw," called Goodwin, sharply; "I've got you cove