all,
and that he is engaged in fitting out an armed expedition with which he
hopes to recover his kingdom. That's what brought me here, and I must
say I rather admire him for attempting such a thing. Of course, it was
Kalonay who put him up to it; he would never have stirred from the
boulevards if that young man had not made him. But he is here,
nevertheless, waiting for a favorable opportunity to sail, and he has
ten thousand rifles and three Maxim guns lying in his yacht out there
in the harbor. That's how I came to learn about it. I was getting an
estimate on an outfit I was thinking of taking into Yucatan from my old
gunsmith in the Rue Scribe, and he dropped a hint that he had shipped
ten thousand rifles to Tangier, to Colonel Erhaupt. I have met Erhaupt
in Zanzibar, and knew he was the King's right-hand man, so I put two
and two together and decided I would follow them up, and----"

"Yes, and now," interrupted Miss Carson, sharply--"and now that you
have followed them up, what do you mean to do?"

Gordon looked his surprise at her earnestness, but answered that he did
not know what he would do; he thought he would either ask them to give
him a commission in their expedition, and let him help them fight, and
write an account of their adventures later, or he would telegraph the
story at once to his paper. It was with him, he said, entirely a
question as to which course would be of the greater news value. If he
told what he now knew, his paper would be the first of all others to,
inform the world of the expedition and the proposed revolution; while
if he volunteered for the expedition and waited until it had failed or
succeeded, he would be able to tell more eventually, but would have to
share it with other correspondents.

Miss Carson regarded him with an expression in which indignation and
entreaty were curiously blended.

"Archie," she said, in a low voice, "you do not know what you are doing
or saying. You are threatening to spoil the one thing in my life on
which I have set my heart. The return of this man to his throne,
whether he is worthy or not, means the restoration of the Catholic
Church on that island; it means the return of the monks and the
rebuilding of the monasteries, and the salvation of sixty thousand
souls. I know all that they mean to do. I am the one who paid for
those rifles that brought you here; you have told me only what I have
known for months, and for which I have been ear