“Where,” inquired Din Driscoll, with a benevolent interest in their doing the thing right, “is the judge advocate?”

Colonel Miguel Lopez resented what he took for a patronizing concern. It festered his complacency, for his was the code of the bowed neck to those above and the boot-tip for those below. Luckily for him, he did not strike the helpless prisoner. He turned to his judge’s bench instead, which was none other than the frayed and stately sofa of honor from the hacienda sala, deemed requisite to his dignity. The satin upholstery contrasted grotesquely with the adobe walls. Pungent tallow dips lighted the granary to a dull yellow, and mid the sluggish tobacco clouds were a shrinking prisoner in clerical black, and the mildly interested prisoner in gray, and red uniforms surrounding.

Lopez flung his sword across the empty box that was to serve as desk, and filled the crimson seat with pompous menace. Lopez was a Mexican, but did not look it. He had red hair and a florid skin, and he was large, with great feet and coarse hands. Yet the high cheek bones of an Indian were his. The contrast of coloring and features unpleasantly suggested a mongrel breed. The eyes had red lids, out of which the lashes struck like rusted needles, and the eyes themselves, of a faded blue, seemed to fawn an excuse for Nature’s maladjusting. 174But he had a goodly frame on which to hang the livery of a king’s guardsman. And as the cross of the Legion of Honor ticketed his breast, he must have been a goodly man too, and his Maker’s insignia only a libel. Once Maximilian had said, “What, Bebello, and art thou a better judge of men than I, thy master and the master of men?” For it seemed that Bebello, the simple hound, had read Nature’s voucher instead of Napoleon’s, and being thus deceived, would ever snarl at the Colonel of Dragoons. Maximilian of course knew better. What looked like toadying was only profound deference for himself. The royal favorite could discriminate. He could also be the thick-headed, intolerable martinet. The sandy lashes bristled as the American inquired a second time if he were to have counsel.

“Being president of this court,” Lopez announced, “I am judge advocate.”

In the tone of congratulation Driscoll blandly said, “Well, then, I challenge the president.”

“Challenge?”

“Certainly, Your Honor. It’s my right, either on the ground of inexperience, malice, or–but I reckon the first two will do.”

“This is insolence!” cried the president, and glaring angrily, he maintained that it was a regular court martial for the field, and that as he was the ranking officer at hand, there could be no appeal beyond himself.

“A regular drum-head,” Driscoll observed. “Well, let it go at that. I’m in a hurry.”

Lopez called a lieutenant of Austrian cavalry to his right upon the sofa, and the Dragoon color sergeant to his left, and the three of them sat thenceforth in judgment. The charges were read, and next a deposition, gathered that day from Michel Ney. Therein appeared the American, reinforcing Rodrigo GalÁn at Tampico, and in so far aiding the abduction of Mademoiselle d’Aumerle.

175“The complicity is evident,” stated Lopez, and his colleagues, blinking at the candles on the box, nodded wisely.

“It’s straight so far,” Driscoll agreed, “but the story goes a little further. Does the ma’am’selle herself happen to have left any deposition?”

She had, admitted the president, but it merely corroborated the foregoing. Driscoll, in sole charge of his own defence, insisted that her deposition be read, but Lopez would permit no such waste of time. He was brooding on Monsieur Éloin usurping his own place near the Emperor, and he wanted to finish the present business so as to overtake them both.

Dupin’s written evidence provided the rest of the abduction story, seemingly, and there remained only the other charge, that of assisting at the ambush of the murdered Captain Maurel. For this there was no evidence, and the accused himself was examined.

“Your name?” asked the court.

“Driscoll.”

“Your full name, hombre?”

“John Dinwiddie Driscoll, Your Honor.”

“Din–whatever it is–that’s not a Christian name?”

“It was, when I got it. Maybe I’ve paganized it since.”

“Devil take you, this is solemn!”

“Yes, this is solemn.”

Lopez cracked his long nails irritably against each other.

“You came here via Tampico,” he began anew. “What days were you in Tampico?”

“From about the twenty-third or twenty-fourth, till we left a few days ago.”

All three judges bent over a memorandum which the president pointed out among his notes. Captain Maurel was killed about April 26th.

“How did you occupy yourself while in Tampico?”

176“Mostly trying to persuade Murgie here that it was his move.”

“But your horse needed exercise. Did you at any time ride across the river?”

“I didn’t notice. Have you anyone who saw me cross?”

“Goot!” blurted out the Austrian who was one of the judges, so suddenly that everybody half jumped. “Ya, das iss die cosa, sabe! Who has him seen cross?”

The court floundered. The witness demanded by the accused was lacking. MurguÍa, a restless, huddled form on a straw-bottomed chair, was watching hungrily every step in the examination. Now he shifted excitedly, and his sharp jaws worked with a grinding motion. Then his voice came, a raucous outburst.

“Search him, Your Mercy!”

Lopez browbeat the meddler, and–took his advice. Driscoll submitted tolerantly to their fumbling over him, and all the while MurguÍa looked on as a famished dog, especially when they pulled out the whiskey flask. But when they tossed the thing aside, he sank deep into his black coat and gave vent to mumblings.

“Of course we find nothing,” Lopez complained, “since his accomplice recommended the search.”

It seemed, too, that the state’s case must fall.

“The Captain Maurel charge cannot hold,” announced the court.

“Ya, goot–mucha bueno!” exclaimed the Austrian with enthusiasm, while the color sergeant, who had a red nose, wet his lips hopefully. He believed that an acquitted outlaw, if a gentleman, would stand a bottle.

“And as to the first charge,” continued the president, “here is the deposition of the SeÑorita d’Aumerle, which I have held till now for this purpose. Read it, and you will note that though the marquesa bears out the SeÑor Ney, she further 177testifies to the prisoner having later saved her from this very Rodrigo GalÁn at peril to himself. Bien, seÑores, have you any further questions?”

The Austrian crinkled his brow, and after a momentous pause, shook his head till his cheeks rattled. The Dragoon promptly replied, “No, mi coronel.” Then the three withdrew, and when they came back, the Dragoon wiping his lips, they informed the accused that he was not guilty.

“Which isn’t news,” said Driscoll as he thanked them.

MurguÍa’s turn came next. The proof of the old man’s guilt blossomed almost of itself. Jacqueline, to clear her protector, had been forced to depose how MurguÍa had willingly betrayed her into Rodrigo’s hands. But she described the old man’s reluctance. He would have saved her, except for his terror of the outlaw. The sole case for the defence was MurguÍa’s character for stinginess; such a miser could not be accused of aiding the guerrillas. But this very point seemed to heighten Lopez’s prejudice against him. Driscoll, being held to testify, only talked sociably, and told nothing, and when under the quizzing he finally lost patience, he said, “Oh, let him go! What’s the use?”

But they were so far from any such thing that they condemned him to be shot.

Then a voice was heard at the door. The sentinel there stumbled back, and Don Tiburcio brushed by him into the room.

“Old man,” he called, “come with me! Your daughter––”

MurguÍa started up, weakly swaying. The senile eyeballs, so lately parched by fear, swam in a moisture not of avarice. Someone was speaking to him of his daughter. He had not seen her yet. They would not let him. And now he must think of her in this new connection, which was his death. And her misery to learn it, and her misery, afterward! On the morrow they would be taking him to the capital, his 178sentence would be confirmed, he would be shot. Nothing of this he doubted. And he would never see her again.

MurguÍa stretched out his arms toward the president of the court, “You will let me go to her, seÑor? Your Mercy will let me go to her?” He murmured her name over and over, “MarÍa de la Luz! MarÍa–Luzita mia!” until the words became a kind of crooning. Then he would break forth again, entreating, commanding, “Your Mercy will let me see her? SeÑor, you will let me see her!”

At the first note of intrusion Lopez had brought the pommel of his sword down upon the box in front of him. But the syllables of the girl’s name seemed to get into his memory, and he began to stare with a puzzled frown at the half-crazed old man. Lifting his eyes, he met Tiburcio’s, and Tiburcio himself nodded in some deep hidden significance. Lopez straightened abruptly, as at an astounding revelation.

“Tell me, SeÑor MurguÍa,” he said, “your daughter–Yes, yes, man, you shall see her!–But listen, what is she like? Has she large black eyes? Does she wear red sometimes? Come, seÑor, answer!”

The father gazed, wonderingly, jealously. How should an elegant officer from the City and the Court know aught of MarÍa de la Luz?

Tiburcio crept behind the sofa, and bending to Lopez’s ear, he whispered, “Si, si, mi coronel, she is the one you have in mind, and she is his daughter.”

Lopez swung round and searched the blackmailer’s face. “And now––”

“You will let him come,” said Tiburcio. “But bring two guards. And have four others with–well, with a stretcher.”

Again Lopez searched the dark crescent that was Tiburcio’s eye, and again Tiburcio nodded with deep significance. “Bring him,” he repeated, “but tell him nothing. Seeing will be enough.”

179MurguÍa went, unknowing. He would see her, thanks to some freakish kindness in Don Tiburcio. He was torn between the joy of the meeting and the sharp grief of the parting that must follow. At the time he never noticed that they led him up the chapel walk instead of toward the hacienda house. Tiburcio was ahead with a lantern, but when near the top of the hill he turned back to them, yet not before the expectant Lopez had seen a black something on the pavement under the swinging light.

“You first, mi coronel,” said Tiburcio.

“I, you mean!” cried MurguÍa, “I, seÑor!”

“But we wish to see first if she is here,” said Lopez. “Don Tiburcio thought she might be at vespers.”

“Vespers? There are no vespers to-night. Yet we come here! Why? Why do we come here?”

Tiburcio motioned to the guards. “Hold him until we return,” he ordered.

A Dragoon reached out a hand indifferently to MurguÍa’s collar, and that second the old man’s ten fingers were at his throat. They overpowered him at last, but they would have fared better with a wildcat.

Tiburcio and Lopez went alone. They stopped before the covered thing near the church door.

“So,” mused the colonel, “she ended it this way.”

“From the tower,” Tiburcio grimly added.

“His––”

“Well, say it. You mean His Majesty?”

“His Majesty need know nothing of the–of the finale.”

“Who is there to tell him, por Dios? I won’t. You won’t.”

“But you forget a third, Don Tiburcio. I mean the man who was with you several evenings ago, when you––”

“When I was carrying off the padre’s sweetheart?”

“When somehow you two happened in this desolate neighborhood. Since you took his name out of my mouth just 180now, you must have recognized that it was His Majesty whom you saw talking to her almost where she now lies. I was near by, guarding his privacy, but you both escaped before I could stop you. Now then, who was that other intruder?”

The other was Rodrigo GalÁn, but Tiburcio replied, “The other will not have much to say. Poor Captain Maurel!”

“Bueno, bueno!”

“Not yet, mi coronel. Only we two know of Maximilian’s part in this, but we must keep it from her father above all others. I am a loyal Imperialist, Don Miguel.”

“What difference does that make?”

“The Empire faces a crisis.”

The royal favorite started guiltily. Since the news of the Confederacy’s surrender, Lopez’s ambitions were clouded by a growing fear of the fugitive Mexican republic. The Republic would have a good memory for royal favorites, and he had been thinking on it. “Will Lee’s surrender make such–such a difference?” he faltered.

“So much,” retorted Tiburcio, “that to-morrow we will have more rebels yet. So much, that what with freeing peons and confiscating nationalized church lands and giving them back to the church–well, a very little more might decide between Empire and Republic.”

“A little more? What do you mean?”

“I mean money for the rebels. Luz’s father is rich. If he knew that Maximilian––”

“Hombre, hombre, he’s a miser!”

“Just the same, I’m a loyal Imperialist, and if you are, too, you will take good care to tell nothing to Don Anastasio.”

“You forget, seÑor, that I am the one to say that to you.”

“Then don’t forget, Colonel Lopez. Do not forget that she fell, that it was a simple accident.”

“Yes, a simple accident. Wait here, I am going to bring her father.”

181On returning Lopez sent the guards away, and he and MurguÍa were alone together. The old man stood dazed, unresisting.

“One minute more,” said Lopez. “First, I must tell you something. And afterward, you will remember. Yes, you will remember–afterward. You know who I am, that I command the Dragoons of the Empress.–Are you listening? But do you know that, in a way, I am Maximilian’s confidant? Whenever he walks or rides, incognito, dressed as a ranchero, I alone go with him, as I did during the past ten days while we stopped at Las Palmas, three leagues from here. The very first evening there, we two rode out, with our cloaks about us. He likes to commune with nature, and gather curious flowers which he pastes in a book and labels with Latin names. But this time he was interested in peons, yet as he had a delicacy about prying into his host’s business, we rode until we left Las Palmas behind us. His Majesty would gaze on the hills and look at the sunset, and he talked to me of a poetic calm about them which made him long for he knew not what. And MurguÍa––”

Here the speaker paused abruptly, and his faded eyes shifted and hardened.

“And MurguÍa, we came here, and–he met your child. He met her here, at this chapel, where she had been to pray for her aunt. Old man, do you hear me, the Emperor met your daughter! Then, next day, instead of going on with his journey, he complained of a cough, and stayed at Las Palmas. But every evening he rode here, he and I. Once I found a chance to ask her her name, but she would only tell her given name.–There, you will remember? Yes, you will–after you have seen her. Come, she is not far away.”