silent once more, for he was still feeling mean, and was asking
himself whether he were not, after all, a kind of spy in the Mexican
camp, going around in disguise, and all the while wishing that he could
help the American army to capture the city.

"Anyhow," he thought, "I can't help myself just now, and when the city
is taken, everything in the Paez house will be entirely safe. I
shouldn't wonder if that old coffee-urn will be safer from thieves than
it is now. There have been half a dozen burglaries since we came, and
I've seen hundreds of the wildest-looking kinds of fellows from the
mountains. Every man of them looked as if he'd like to steal some
silver."

While he was thinking, he was also listening, with a great deal of
interest, to a description which the old officer was giving of the
defences of Monterey, and of the reasons why the American troops would
surely be defeated. It appeared that he had at one time been the
commander of the garrison of the fortress known as the Black Fort, just
outside of the walls of Monterey, on the north, and he evidently
believed it to be impregnable. Ned was no soldier, and it did not occur
to him to ask, as General Taylor might have done, whether or not it was
possible to take the town without wasting time in taking the fort first.

"Come, Senor Carfora," said Felicia, as they all arose from the table,
"I will show you the library. You can't do much reading there to-night,
though, for the lamps have all been taken away. I do not wish to go
there, anyhow, except in the daytime. It is a pokerish kind of place. Do
you believe in ghosts? I do not, but, if I were a ghost, I would pick
out that library for a good place to hide in. Come along. You are a
foreigner, and any kind of good Mexican ghost won't like you."

Whether she herself did so or not, she led the way, and no lamp was as
yet needed, although the day was nearly over and the shadows were
coming. Up-stairs they went and through a short passageway in the second
story of the Paez mansion, and they were almost in the dark when she
said to him:

"Here we are. Hardly any one ever comes here, and it will be dreadfully
dusty. Books are dusty old things anyhow."

She turned the big brass knob in the dusky door before them, and shoved
against it with all her might, but Ned had to help her with his
shoulder, or the massive mahogany portal would not have yielded an inch.
It did go slowly in, upon its ancient-looking bronze hin