WHEN I awoke in the morning, the sunlight was shining brightly through the shutters, and I lay awhile getting things straightened out in my mind, wondering what the authorities would do next, and sorting my own cards. Then I noticed a murmuring all about, not like a conversation of a few people, but like the voices of a crowd at some distance. I took a cautious peek. Oh, my native country! The yard was full of soldiers of the City Guard in their pink uniforms, all squatting on the ground very dejectedly.

“Hi!” I thought. “There's no hurry about getting dressed. The cook must have stayed shy, or they'd have got me.”

I never saw that cook again. I've heard that he came on the soldiers about three o'clock in the morning, camping in the front yard. Their orders were to stay there till I came home. The cook went off into the country to avoid politics.

“Speaking of the cook now,” I said to myself, “they'll arrest me without breakfast. They'll march me into town afoot, like a malefactor. It won't do for the dignity of The Union Electric.”

With that I wrapped myself and the telephone in double blankets, took out the plug, and cautiously rang up a livery-stable.

“Carriage!” I said, “to Senor Kirby's house, North Road, in an hour.”

Then I prospected in the kitchen on tiptoe, and collected a spirit-lamp and such matters, got dressed, and breakfasted behind the shutters with a calmness that was a bit artificial. The City Guard wasn't breakfasting. By the calamitous features of the elderly officer sitting on my horse-block, they didn't expect to. El Capitano Lugo was his name, and a very friendly man, after breakfast.

I sat smoking behind the shutters, and waited for the carriage, which came along leisurely about nine. The soldiery destroyed the picket-fence getting into the road all together.

“What news?” said El Capitano Lugo.

The driver was a scared man.

“Eh!” he said. “But I know nothing, Senor Capitano, nothing! Carriage to Senor Kirby, North Road. A telephone.”

“It is an empty house, idiot!”

With that they were all crowded close about the carriage, talking in low tones, but excited. It was about ghosts, as the captain told me after, and there ran a theory among them that I had been a spirit for the last twelve hours, turning off lights and sending telephones to avenge the atrocity of my murder.

But it got no farther than a theory, because of the opening of the door, and me coming out on the porch in duck trousers, polka-dot tie, and a calm that was artificial.

“Is that my carriage?” I asked.

“Ah!” shouted the captain, making for me, over the wrecks of the picket-fence. I said:

“How d'ye do?”

“I arrest you!” said he.

“Of course you do. Get into the carriage.”

And off we went bowling toward the city, with the guard plodding far behind in pink uniforms, and very dejected. Captain Lugo himself would answer nothing when I tried to show him that pink uniforms were in bad taste for a city guard.

But, oh, the extravagance of language at the City Hall, and the Mayor with his beautiful temper in ruins!

“Intolerable! The contempt of dignity, the mockery of constituted power! By whose orders were the lights turned off?”

“Mine, your Excellency, of course. Told you all about it last Saturday.”

“Â la carcel!” he shouted, with his official moustache standing up at the ends. “He has despised the city. Take him to jail, hastily.”

“You'd better look out,” I said. “It's an international complication. The United States will be capturing Portate with an extension of the Monroe Doctrine,” I said, fishing wildly for an argument.

“Insolent foreigner!” said he.

“May Portate be darkened forever!” said I.

“A la cÂrcel!” said he, and four pink uniforms hustled me and my duck trousers out into the street and around the corner to the jail.

Now that was an unpleasing place to be in. I charged up fifty dollars for the experience, to The Union Electric Company, who said it was a good joke and paid it, eventually; but it wasn't a joke.

The jail was an expanse of deal-wall on the street, except at one place where there was an architectural doorway. And within there was a large patio or courtyard, a low adobe building surrounding it, with rows of open cells, and a sort of cemented veranda in front. That was the Portate City Jail entire. There were guards at the door. They shoved you in, and you did what you chose. There were groups of dirty peons lolling about, others playing some game with pebbles and fragments of cement, two women who had been officially interrupted while pounding each other's heads, a donkey, some cats, and a sad-eyed pig, all arrested for vagrancy.

I sent a guard up to the hotel for a chair, and sat down haughtily in the corner of the veranda behind the gateway and farthest from the sun. The groups of peons gathered around me. Their manners were naturally good, but they couldn't avoid the romantic fascination of me. I sent another guard with a telegram to the United States Minister and a message for the resident Consul. I gave the guard a dollar to buy tobacco and cigarette papers, and compromised with the friendly peons. We agreed on a circle twenty feet away, which was near enough for conversation, and far enough for a draught between. There was a wall of them, all supplied with cigarettes, and me the centre of observation. We discussed the government of Portate, and there was no one in the City Jail but thought it needed reform.

By and by the Consul came, and he was so interested and pleased with the situation that he wasn't up to the duties of his office, as I told him. He said the Mayor was in luck, on account of the extreme heat up-country at the capital.

“My guess at the Mayor is: he's figuring to keep you in jail over night for the sake of his dignity, and cover you with documentary apologies in the morning,” said the Consul. “And I've been telegraphing the Minister, and can't get him; for he's gone hunting up the cool of the mountains with the President of the Republic, the Minister of the Interior, and some other official parties. I say, why did you pick out a festival and presidential excursion day? You bold, bad man! said he, sticking his hands in his pockets and laughing at me.

“Stay here all night!” I shouted.

“Can't help it,” said the Consul, grinning. “I've done all I could. He'll get into trouble likely. What can I do, if he wants to run his risk and stand by his luck?”

“I'll denounce you at home for inefficiency.”

“Have a cot bed?”

“Get out!”

“Pleasant dreams!” he said. “It 'll be a hot night;” and with that he went off grinning.

The afternoon wore away slowly. I began to think the Mayor might have me down after all, and wondered if Chepa would run the plant that night with a detachment of pink soldiery over him. I sent a guard after some lunch. No one else came except my lawyer, who brought some newspapers, and said the Mayor was blushing all over with happiness and conceit. He said there were crowds in the Plaza, and sure enough you could hear the mutter and shuffle of them, for the Plaza was but a few blocks away. It seemed to me they were making more noise than before, and when the lawyer was gone, and the afternoon was late, it seemed to have grown to a kind of dull roaring, with shouts and howls intermixed. The peons in the patio were stirring about, too, and jabbering. The dusk was coming on faintly.