started back with an exclamation of
astonishment, and even Manuel paused.

On a square block of stone in the center of the room, which Manuel could
have sworn was not there when he looked into the chamber a short
half-hour before, sat Guy Cecil, complacently puffing at a briar pipe.
His tweeds were as immaculate as though he had just stepped from the
hands of his valet, and his tan shoes showed mark neither of mud nor
rough trails. Manuel's quick glance caught these details and they set
him wondering.

"By the Ten Finger-Bones!" ejaculated Leborge. "How did you get in
here?"

"Why?" asked Cecil, in mild surprise.

"Polliovo didn't see you come. I didn't see you come."

"No?"

The negation was insolent in its carelessness.

"But how did you get in?"

The Englishman took his pipe from his mouth, and, with the stem, pointed
negligently to a window.

"That way," he said.

The negro blustered out an oath, but was evidently impressed, and looked
at his fellow-conspirator with superstitious fear.

The Cuban, more curious and more skeptical, went straight to the window
and looked out. The crumbling mortar-dust on the sill had evidently been
disturbed, seeming to make good the Englishman's story, but, from the
window, was a clear drop of four hundred feet of naked rock, without
even a crack to afford a finger-hold, while the precipitous descent fell
another fifteen hundred feet. To climb was a feat manifestly impossible.

"Permit me to congratulate you on your discovery of wings, Senor Cecil,"
remarked Manuel, with irony.

The Englishman bowed, as at a matter-of-course compliment, and, by
tacit agreement, the subject dropped.

Yet Manuel's irritation was hard to hide. Not the least of the reasons
for his animosity to Cecil was the Englishman's undoubted ability to
cover his movements. In the famous case when the two conspirators had
negotiated an indigo concession in San Domingo and the profits had
suddenly slipped through Manuel's fingers, the Cuban was sure that the
Englishman had made a winning, but he had no proof. Likewise, with this
plot in hand, Manuel feared lest he should be outmanoeuvred at the last.

Following Cecil's example, Leborge and Manuel rolled out to the center
of the room some blocks that had fallen from the walls, and sat down.
Stuart noticed that the Cuban so placed himself that he was well out of
a possible line of fire between the negro general and the embrasure
where the boy was hid