an order and the troopers lowered their weapons.
Straight on for the party rode Harding, toppling out of his saddle as
he reached them. The fellow was badly wounded. He had been struck by
a flying splinter in the explosion of the dynamite.

"Ah, a countryman of yours," remarked the captain, with a tinge of
sarcasm. "You should be proud of him, senors."

But Jack was on his knees beside Harding.

"Where is my father, Harding? Tell me quick!"

"I will," gasped out the wounded man. "Madero had him tied in that
grove yonder. He wished him to see the destruction of his mine, he
said, and----"

The man fainted. Rascal as they knew him to be, the boys were soon
applying such remedies as they could--all but Jack, that is. The boy,
on Harding's pony, was off at lightning speed for the grove Harding had
indicated. As he entered it, he spied Mr. Merrill tied, as Harding had
said, to a tree. Of the meeting between father and son we prefer to
let each reader draw his own mental picture.

"Merrill, forgive me!" breathed Harding, who had recovered from his
swoon a few moments after as Jack and his father came up from the grove.

"I may forgive you, Harding," rejoined Jack, "but I can never forget."

And forgive Jack did, as he showed by interceding for the man and
having him removed to a hospital near Rosario. Harding ultimately
recovered and of his further movements we have no knowledge. He fared
better, however, than Hickey, Divver and Rafter, who were captured by
the government forces and sentenced to death by a summary court-martial.

Mr. Merrill rapidly explained that he had ridden ten miles or more from
the mine with Harding before he became suspicious. He then asked
Harding point blank where his son was, and the fellow's reply had been
to give a peculiar whistle. Thereupon several insurrectos had leaped
from the bushes and made the mine owner captive. As Harding had told
Jack, Madero, with fiendish cruelty, had tied him in the grove to
witness the annihilation of his own mine.

After a short pause, during which restoratives were administered to the
almost exhausted Americans from the Mexican officers' field kit, they
headed for the mine to ascertain what damage had been done by the
explosion. Almost the first object that met their eyes as they neared
the stockade was a jagged break in the structure caused by a large
object that had come crashing down upon it. On closer view this proved
to be the stee