you with your hands
grasp me you would be like a child to destroy."

"Having made all this plain, go ahead and tell me what you are after,"
urged Merriwell.

"Are you not afraid? I expected to hear your teeth chattering together
like castanets. I expected to feel your body shaking, as if with a great
chill."

There was disappointment in these whispered words.

"What good would it do me to be afraid?"

"Can you reason like that in a moment when your life is in the most
terrible danger? Have you ice in your veins?"

"Why should you do me an injury? If you are here to rob me----"

"I am not! I am here to make you stop from robbing me. I told you I
would have my right or kill you. You laughed at me. Now you do not
laugh!"

"Felipe Jalisco!"

"It is my name," was the bold confession.

Frank was amazed.

"How did you get into this house?"

"I find the way. When I told you that, night or day, asleep or awake,
there would never be one moment that you would not be free from the
peril of death at my hand, you laughed. You do not laugh now!"

"This isn't my time to laugh," confessed Frank. "Only fools laugh at the
wrong moment."

"You were a fool when you defied me. You did not know me. You did not
know the blood of the Jaliscos in me. To-night you thought yourself safe
from harm. You did not dream it possible that Felipe Jalisco might
strike his knife into your heart while you slept. When I told you that
not one moment would you be safe, you thought it the foolish talk of a
boy. Now you see."

"It is too dark for me to see very well."

"I am here to make you swear to give me what is mine. If you do it not,
then you die!"

"And you will go to the electric chair at Sing Sing. Should you kill me
to-night, Jalisco, you would be executed for murder."

"Paugh! I fear it not."

"Do you fancy you could escape?"

"I could."

"How little you reckon on the power of the law in this country. For you
there would be no escape. You threatened my life, and that threat was
heard before many witnesses. Those witnesses are all rich and powerful
men. Should I be killed here and now, the first thing those men would do
would be to bring all their combined influence to bear on having you
arrested immediately, and convicted of that murder. Even if you were not
guilty, and by some chance an unknown party should murder me, you would
find it almost impossible to escape punishment for the crime. All those
men would believe you d