nation possessed was provided by the
merchant patriots, who armed and sent out, or themselves commanded, its
fleets of privateers. Very likely the Crawfords and a number of other
American families could point back to as adventurous an ancestry as
could any Spaniard whose forefathers had fought Moors or won estates for
themselves in Mexico or Peru. As for Mrs. Crawford, she was hardly able
to drink her coffee that morning, after reading the newspaper, and she
might have been even more willing to have Ned come home if she had known
what had become of the _Goshhawk_, and in what company he was a couple of
hours after she arose from her table.

Company? That was it. He was now walking along one of the streets of
Vera Cruz with a squad of men of whom she would have decidedly
disapproved, but whose character her husband would have understood at
sight. Ned's first acquaintance, Pablo, as he called himself, with his
four comrades, made up so thoroughly Mexican a party at all points that
it was in no danger of being interfered with by the mob. Every member of
this had seen, often enough, the son of some wealthy landholder from the
upland country attended by a sufficient number of his own retainers to
keep him from being plundered, and it was well enough to let him alone.
On they went, but it was by a circuitous route and a back street that
they reached the Tassara place. Even then, they did not enter it by the
front door, but by a path which led down to the stables in the rear of
the house. No outsider would afterward be able to say that he saw that
party of men march into the courtyard to be welcomed by Colonel Tassara
and the mysterious personage whom Ned was trying to think of as General
Zuroaga.

"He may be of more importance than I had any idea of," said Ned to
himself, "and I wish I knew what was coming next."

He was not to find out immediately, for Zuroaga motioned him to go on
into the house, while he himself and Tassara remained to talk with
Pablo and the other machete-bearers.

Hardly was Ned three steps inside of the dwelling, when he was met by
Senora Tassara, apparently in a state of much mental agitation.

"My dear young friend!" she exclaimed, "I am so glad you have escaped
from them! Come in. We shall have no regular dinner to-day. You will eat
your luncheon now, however. We are all busy packing up. We must set out
for the country as soon as it is dark. The colonel's enemies are
following him like so many