the Cuban that the weapon was
covering his heart. An even slighter narrowing of the eyelids warned him
that Cecil was fully ready to shoot.

With a low curse, the Cuban retreated to his stone and sat down. He did
not sprawl loosely in dejection, as had the negro, but he sat with one
foot beside the stone and his body leaning half-forward, his muscles
tense, like a forest cat awaiting its spring.

The conference came to a head quickly, as Stuart saw. The outbreak of
mistrust and hostility, followed by discussion, proved how closely
linked were the plotters. Yet each man wanted the business done as
quickly as possible, and wanted to be free from the danger of
assassination by his comrades.

Leborge drew from his pocket a paper which he showed to the other two,
and, in turn, Manuel and Cecil produced documents, the Englishman using
his left hand only and never dropping the barrel of his revolver. Few
words were exchanged, and these in the low tones in which the conference
had been carried on before. Of the contents of the papers, Stuart could
not even guess. Whatever they were, they seemed to be satisfactory,
for, so far as the boy could judge, harmony returned among the
conspirators. But the Englishman kept wary watch with his gun.

"All goes well, then," concluded Leborge, rising and shivering in the
damp air, for the clouds were eddying through the ruined windows in raw
and gusty blasts.

"It can be done next spring!" declared the Cuban.

"It will be done, as agreed," was the Englishman's more cautious
statement.

"Then," said Manuel, raising his voice a trifle in a way which Stuart
knew he was meant to hear, "the sooner I get down to Cap Haitien the
better. I had trouble enough to get up."

"It might be well," suggested the Englishman, "if Leborge should repeat
his trick of appearing as the ghost of Christophe. The guards will be so
frightened that they will think of nothing else, and you will be able to
get away without any unpleasantness."

"And you?" queried the Cuban. "How will you go?"

Again the Englishman nodded toward the window.

"I will use the wings you were kind enough to say I must possess," he
answered, enigmatically.

Peering out cautiously from his post of observation in the embrasure,
Stuart saw that both Manuel and Leborge hesitated at the entrance to
the dark passage which led from the Dining Hall and Queen's Chamber to
the inner court, from whence went the paths leading respectively