ce of many
women and priests. The conquerors strove to secure the place as with a
fowler's net, yet now and again a bird of the air fluttered through
their meshes. The paper which Don Luiz held ran as follows: "May not a
countryman of heretics choose his own king? When Death peers too
closely--as was the case upon the galleon _San Jose_--may not a man turn
his coat and send Death seeking elsewhere? Death gone by, may not the
man be willing (if it be so that he is not well entreated of his new
masters) to take again the colors to which on a Corpus Christi day of
which you wot he swore fealty? At sunrise this morning the English laid
toils for you. I have knowledge to sell. Will you buy my wares with five
thousand pesos of silver and the letter to Cartagena which I desired?...
I wrap this in a fig-leaf and drop it from the window to Dolores
laughing with the seamen below. If you will buy, then raise above the
battery a pennant of red that may be seen from the room with the hidden
door in the Friar's House."

"The dog! I thought that he perished with Antonio de Castro!" spoke
Mexia.

"That he did not," answered the Governor. "He is so false that were
there none else with whom to play the traitor, his right hand would
betray his left.... The English called him Francis Sark."

"You'll pay?"

"He shall think I'll pay," said the other. "So they lay their toils!--it
needs not this paper to tell me that;" he tapped it as it lay before
him. "Somewhat will this Englishman, this Nevil, do to-night. He hath
his game in his mind,--his hand on this piece, his eye on that, these
pawns in reserve, those advanced for action." De Guardiola leaned back
in his chair and studied the ceiling. "Ha, Pedro! we must discover what
he would do! When I know his dispositions, blessed Mother of God, what
check may I not give him!"

"But if Desmond escapes not," began the duller Mexia, "we may learn not
at all, or we may learn too late. Then all's conjecture. They fight like
fiends, and day by day we lose. What if they overbear us yet?"

Don Luiz brought his gaze from the ceiling to meet the look of the
lesser man. Mexia fidgeted, at last burst forth: "There are times when
the devil dwells in your eye and upon your lip! 'Twas so you smiled in
the Valdez matter and when that slave girl died! What do you mean?"

"Mean?" answered De Guardiola, still smiling. "I mean, my friend, that
we must know what traps they bait down yonder." He called to thos