tuart rose, too, and she held out her hand to him.

He took and kissed it reverently; then his face still calm and
dignified, he stepped to the door.

"It is best," he said, "that I should go."

"Can you not wait to see us start?" asked the girl.

"You will find a boat on the shore just in front of you," began the
other. "And you had best start as soon as it is light. But there is
nobody about here, and you are not in any danger. As to my staying, I
will watch you from the woods, a short ways back. It would not be well
for me to stay here, for I am human----"

The man paused a moment as he gazed into the girl's beautiful face.

"I am very weak," he said, with a sad smile. "I might accept the reward
you offer."

And with that he bowed, then turned resolutely on his heel and strode
away into the darkness.

As he did so he passed Clif; and Clif, as he saw him leave rushed toward
the dark figure that stood in the doorway of the hut.

What had been Clif's agony of mind may be imagined. When he saw the
lieutenant going away it had flashed over him that perhaps he refused
the act of treason implied in his going to America.

And Clif's heart began to throb once more with the wild hope he had
tried so hard to suppress.

"Bessie!" he panted. "Bessie! What did he say?"

"He has gone back to Havana," was the answer.

For an instant the two stood staring at each other, their hearts
throbbing with an emotion they were ashamed to call joy. Clif saw the
girl's slender figure trembling.

And he sprang forward and caught her in his arms just as she fainted
dead away.

CHAPTER XX.

AN UNEXPECTED PERIL.

How the long hours between then and sunrise passed away those two hardly
knew. Bessie Stuart, exhausted by her long nervous strain, sank into a
restless slumber. And Clif sat with his eyes fixed on the gradually
lightening doorway.

Clif wanted to feel happy, but he scarcely dared. For he had before his
mind the thought of that lonely Spanish officer, waiting somewhere in
the distance to see them depart and leave him to his fate.

It was a solemn thought, and it made Clif tremble. He almost wished that
the man had not rescued him.

But then again he thought of Ignacio and his frenzied cruelty, and he
felt that he would have died himself to save any man from such a fate as
that.

And now it was done and there was no undoing it. There was no way of
aiding the lieutenant, no way of persuading him, nothing b