"what will Your Mercy do? The ship,
yes, senorita, the ship has sailed already. It left last night for Vera
Cruz."

"And here am I," Jacqueline exclaimed, tapping her foot, "with only one
dress!"

A long bubbling whistle sounded near a gendarme's lantern in the middle
of the street. A block away another sounded, then another, and another,
and others yet, each thinly shrill and distant. It was the challenge to
slumber and the answer of wakefulness from the watches of the night over
the silent city.

"Another quarter gone by!" Murguia exclaimed nervously. "Come,
senoritas, if we are to reach the Valles stage by nightfall, we have no
time to lose. There are your horses, I will----"

A tremor cut short his words. Someone had just emerged from the meson.

"Gracious, Murgie, off so early?" the newcomer observed cheerily.

Murguia scowled. He knew that tone.

"If I'm late, I apologize," the other drawled gently, from behind the
flare of a match over his pipe. "Howsoever, all my eyes weren't shut,
and you wouldn't of left me. Pretty quiet about striking camp, though!
Didn't want to disturb me, maybe? Well, well, who made you so
thoughtful? Not Captain Morel? Now I wonder!"

"I uh, why _should_ I wake you, Mis-ter Driscoll? Have I asked you
even to go?"

"N-o, but you evidently asked old Demijohn there." And Driscoll pointed
to his horse, all saddled. "But cheer up, Convoluting Squirmer, of
course I know you aren't a horse thief. No, I just come out to say you
forgot the blanket. I was sleeping on it."

Then he turned to the two girls. They were going also. But why try to
leave him behind, even without a horse? He knew, for all his whimsical
cheerfulness, that something serious was afoot. It was hardly likely
that the girls themselves had interfered. Still, he must make sure. To
provoke a reply elsewhere, he asked Murguia if it were the senoritas,
perhaps, and not Captain Morel, who preferred his absence? A surprised
"Ma foi!" from Jacqueline answered him. As he supposed, she had not
thought of him one way or another.

But she deigned to say, that since the American _gentleman_--there
was a lingering on the word, which opened wide the Storm Centre's eyes
with anticipation of battle--that since the American gentleman had
broached the subject of his going (as no doubt interesting him, being
about himself), then she would permit herself to inquire why, indeed, he
should be going with them at all. She had not observed