unter from the States, or a Manchester
drummer, prepared to offer six months' credit on blankets and hardware.

Clay rose and strode across the room, circling the tables in such a way
that he could keep himself between the stranger and the door. At his
approach the new-comer turned his back and fumbled with his change on
the counter.

"Captain Burke, I believe?" said Clay. The stranger bit the cigar he
had just purchased, and shook his head. "I am very glad to see you,"
Clay continued. "Sit down, won't you? I want to talk with you."

"I think you've made a mistake," the stranger answered, quietly. "My
name is--"

"Colonel, perhaps, then," said Clay. "I might have known it. I
congratulate you, Colonel."

The man looked at Clay for an instant, with the cigar clenched between
his teeth and his blue eyes fixed steadily on the other's face. Clay
waved his hand again invitingly toward a table, and the man shrugged
his shoulders and laughed, and, pulling a chair toward him, sat down.

"Come over here, boys," Clay called. "I want you to meet an old friend
of mine, Captain Burke."

The man called Burke stared at the three men as they crossed the room
and seated themselves at the table, and nodded to them in silence.

"We have here," said Clay, gayly, but in a low voice, "the key to the
situation. This is the gentleman who supplies Mendoza with the sinews
of war. Captain Burke is a brave soldier and a citizen of my own or of
any country, indeed, which happens to have the most sympathetic
Consul-General."

Burke smiled grimly, with a condescending nod, and putting away the
cigar, took out a brier pipe and began to fill it from his
tobacco-pouch. "The Captain is a man of few words and extremely modest
about himself," Clay continued, lightly; "so I must tell you who he is
myself. He is a promoter of revolutions. That is his business,--a
professional promoter of revolutions, and that is what makes me so glad
to see him again. He knows all about the present crisis here, and he
is going to tell us all he knows as soon as he fills his pipe. I ought
to warn you, Burke," he added, "that this is Captain Stuart, in charge
of the police and the President's cavalry troop. So, you see, whatever
you say, you will have one man who will listen to you."

Burke crossed one short fat leg over the other, and crowded the tobacco
in the bowl of his pipe with his thumb.

"I thought you were in Chili, Clay," he said.

"No,