uld wield (see Walter Scott, who preceded the
present writer by some years). I hope you will forgive this jesting, but
Jim was a great hand to make fun in the very presence of danger, a trait
peculiar to the American character, and so I may be pardoned for
following in his footsteps, for I, too, am an American.

Jim advanced toward the door, and he was thoroughly pleased and
encouraged to discover that he could move with comparative ease though
not noiselessly of course. But what did a little noise inside the room
amount to, when there came the roar of the pursuers outside, for they
had returned upon Jim's trail, guided by the hound.

The crisis had now come. The huge beast knew that his prey was inside,
and he rushed against the door with all of his maddened bulk, and his
great bark boomed through the castle, and filled with fury the Mexican
bandits who raged on the outside; then came the voice of their leader.

"Back, you fools," he cried; "away from that door."

They were quick to obey, and at that instant there came the sharp report
of a pistol; the bullet splintered through the thick casement but it
glanced from Jim's steel breastplate, but this attack aroused him to
action. With a thrill and tremor of the nerves which he could not
repress, he drew back the bolts and with a cry, the impulse of his
humorous excitement, "Desdichado to the Rescue!" he flung the door wide
open, and stepped with clanging stride through the smoke into the dimly
lit hall.

To have seen that great steel-clad figure moving with sudden life would
have struck terror to even the stoutest hearts, and shaken the steadiest
nerves. But these superstitious Mexicans were driven almost out of their
excitable minds by the sudden horror of this seeming apparition. Of one
accord they fled, gibbering, towards the stairs, one falling in a faint
from fright before he reached them. Even the dwarf who was not afraid of
the Powers of Darkness themselves, retreated slowly, sullenly and
suspiciously down the hall.

But there was one of all that gang who did not flee, and that was the
valiant hound. He sprang full for Jim as the latter stepped from the
room into the hall. Jim was not altogether unprepared for this, for he
had reckoned that the hound would be the one to make him trouble. If it
had not been for the protection of the armor which he wore it would have
gone hard with the youth.

But his own strength with the added weight of his suit of mail en