risoned, when the door opened again and two men entered. They
removed the straps from the boys' wrists and retired without a word. A
key grated in the lock after the door had closed. Harry walked over
quickly and tried to open it. There was no handle or lock on the inside
and it would not yield to pressure.

"Well," said Harry, after a short silence, dropping onto one of the
beds.

"Well," repeated Bert in the same half-questioning tone.

"We are prisoners hard and fast. What do you think they mean to do with
us?"

"Send us on to Havana, maybe, for the inspection of Weyler. But in the
meantime what are we going to do? I don't believe in letting them have
it all their own way, do you?"

"No, not when I can get my breath, but their methods are so rapid and
one-sided that they make me dizzy."

"The first thing to consider is some plan of escape."

"And if we escaped we wouldn't be any better off than we were in the
woods. We wouldn't know where to go. However, it would be wise to make a
more careful inspection of our prison house for possible future use."

Acting on this suggestion the boys made a survey of the room. It was a
square apartment, with walls of grey stone. The floor was composed of
smooth stone slabs. The ceiling was heavily timbered. There were two
barred openings in one of the walls just above their heads. They pushed
over the table, and climbing up on it, looked out. In the moonlight,
they could see that the outlook was on what was apparently the jail
yard, a large space enclosed by a high wall. Nothing interposed between
them and the free air outside but two iron bars. They shook these with
all their strength, but they were sunk firmly in the stone frame and
would not budge.

"I don't think they need feel uneasy, for fear we will escape," said
Harry, after they had finished their inspection.

"Nothing left but to knock down the turnkey. Must always call 'em
turnkeys in a stone jail like this."

There was a sound of a key in the lock and the door swung open again.
The man with the clanking keys entered, followed by two others, who
promptly slipped a pair of handcuffs on the wrists of the boys, and
taking each boy by the arm they led them out of the jail and back to the
building into which they had first been ushered at the muzzles of the
guns.

The same dignitary who had ordered their incarceration still sat at his
desk, although in a more dignified attitude. At his right, sat a man who
seem