l
give up all for you. Let us fly from this place; let us fly. Let us not
wait here where these other people are."

"Fly?" said Katie; "where?"

"Yes, fly!"

"But how can we get out? Shall we go out boldly through the gate?"

Suddenly some one came between them, and a voice chimed into the
conversation.

"Yes," said the voice, "fly! That's the ticket. There's a devil here--a
she-devil. I'll show you the way out. If you want to get off without Ashby
seeing you, I'll show you how; I know the way. It's a secret passage.
That's how I escaped the last time; and I'll take you to it when it gets
dark."

It was Russell who had thus interposed. Harry and Katie showed no
resentment whatever at his intrusion, but caught at his suggestion.
Russell alluded with clumsy and rather vulgar playfulness to their tender
relations, and offered, as guardian, to give Katie away the moment they
should find a parson.

Meanwhile Dolores had gone out into the court-yard, followed by Ashby.
There they stopped, and looked at one another in silence.

"Who's that fellow?" said Ashby at last.

Dolores explained that he was a friend of hers who had been of great help
in Cuba. She did not tell how tender their relations had been.

"H'm!" said Ashby. "Never heard of him before. You seemed very intimate."

"He saved my life," said Dolores.

"Saved your life?"

Dolores sighed.

Then more of her story escaped her. At last the whole truth came out.

"What!" said Ashby; "and so you were engaged. In fact, the fellow is an
old lover."

Dolores said nothing, but looked at Ashby with mournful inquiry, as though
appealing to him to know what she ought to do.

"How did he get here?" asked Ashby, calmly.

"He has been seeking for me all these years, and traced me here, and was
captured."

"H'm! that's devotion," said Ashby. "And who's his friend--the girl that
was disguised as priest?"

"I don't know."

"So she's a girl," said Ashby; "and so that's the reason she wouldn't
marry Lopez and Katie. A most infernally pretty girl. Who is she, did you
say?"

"I don't know."

"Didn't your--your friend tell you?"

"No."

It may be supposed that Ashby should have known Brooke's feelings toward
this "priest" by his devotion to her in saving her life. But it was not
so. Brooke's desperate act in flinging himself before Lopez seemed to
Ashby merely an accident consequent upon his struggle with his captors.
Besides, the attack of Dolores and he