ne, even if no good had been accomplished; for if the banished passenger
were indeed Casa Triana, he had done well to get rid of him. If, after
all, his quick suspicion had been too far-fetched, and he had caused the
arrest of an innocent tourist, that tourist would never know to whom he
owed his adventure, and would be powerless to trouble the Duke of Carmona.
As for Ropes, when the photograph taken of me years ago by the police in
Barcelona should reach the police in Irun, it would be seen that two young
men who are twenty-seven, tall, slim, and have dark moustaches, do not
necessarily resemble each other in other details. Mr. George Smith would
be generously pardoned for having occupied the attention of the police in
place of the Marques de Casa Triana, and he would be free to rejoin his
fellow-travellers.

During the three or four minutes of discussion we had had before making
the "quick change" which transformed master into man, we had arranged to
communicate with Ropes by means of advertisements in _La Independencia_.
We would forward money in advance to that journal, enough to pay for
several advertisements, and could then telegraph our whereabouts at the
last minute, whenever the movements of Carmona's car gave us our cue.

This was the best arrangement we could make in a hurry, and when we had
time to reflect, it did not seem to us that, in the circumstances, we
could have done better.

And so, come what might, the outlaw had crossed the border, and was in the
forbidden country of his hopes and heart.

In spite of compunction on Ropes' account, I was happy, desperately happy.
I was free to watch over the girl I loved and who loved me; and I was
drinking in the air of the fatherland. It did actually seem sweeter and
more life-giving than in any other part of the world.

Dick laughed when I mentioned this impression, and said I ought to try the
climate of America before I judged; but he admitted the extraordinary, yet
almost indefinable individuality of the landscape as well as the
architecture, which struck the eye instantly on crossing the frontier.

It was easy to classify as peculiarly Spanish the old Basque churches, the
long, dark lines of sombre houses bristling with little balconies, and
sparkling with projecting windows, whose intricate glass panes gave upward
currents of air in hot weather. All this, and much more was obvious in
town or village; but Dick and I argued over the distinctive features of