Then Jim looked up at the wall which was paneled in some light wood and there his eyes saw something that gave him the clue. He straightened up and moved quickly towards the ghostly figure.

"How are you, Brian de Bois Guilbert?" he said as he came up. "I should like to borrow your suit of armor if you don't mind."

The audacity of James. It was a gigantic suit of armor, and for the moment Jim thought of trying to get into it, but he gave it up. Perhaps as a last resort he might use it, to strike terror into the superstitious greasers and cutthroats who were making their foul nest in this once beautiful home.

It would be perfectly useless for him to try and put it on in the hall, for it would make clangor enough to arouse the deaf or the dead. So Jim very gently wheedled the image of the late Sir Brian inch by inch towards the library and finally got it inside. Luckily there was only a few feet to go, but it took Jim the better half of an hour. This incident of the armor goes to show how carefully Jim was looking to a possible chance in the future. Our old college chum, Jim, was certainly strong on strategy.

"Now, you stay here, Brian, old Boy," he said, "until I come back; if you don't I'll Ivanhoe your old block for you."

Then Jim slipped out in the passageway once more, and went immediately to the place in the hall from whence he had sighted the armor man. There on the wall were medieval weapons—battle-axes, swords and poniards. These were what had given Jim his clue as to what the ghostly figure really represented.

"I reckon that I will have to appropriate some of this hardware, before I explore any further."

He finally selected a small and exceedingly keen poniard, also a short, heavy sword, and thus equipped he was ready for what might come, which as he well knew was apt to be the unexpected. As he stood motionless in the dark hall, with its dimmed radiance at one end, he was sure that he heard the faint sound of voices, which is not saying that the voices were faint by any means.

As he went cautiously along, the sound of the voices came no nearer, but they did not grow less distinct. This puzzled Jim exceedingly.

"I'd give my hat to be able to locate this serenade," he remarked to himself; "it sounds most peculiar."

James went slowly along, feeling the wall as he went, and all at once his fingers came to a slight break in the smooth wood, and the voices became slightly clearer and Jim was positive that he heard the thrum, thrum of a guitar. He ran his fingers up and down near the minute break, until they touched a small wooden button. He hesitated a moment before pressing it, not knowing what might happen nor what might possibly be on the other side.

"Nothing venture, nothing have," he said, and standing to one side he pressed the button and the door came quietly back.

"Well-oiled piece of machinery that," thought Jim; "I wonder who uses this stage entrance anyhow."

Then there came distinctly and clear the voices of several men singing a Mexican song and Jim saw several steps leading to a lower level under a low-arched passageway. He also heard besides the singing the low voices of men speaking and the occasional moving of a chair. He was soon to solve this particular mystery.

Moving cautiously along he reached the end of the short passageway and there he saw that it opened on a balcony that ran across one end of a high vaulted room, embellished with a beautifully carved ceiling of oak. As the balcony was quite high up and shut in by big panels of wood about four feet in height, he could not see the floor below.

Jim dared not raise his head to see who were in the room, which was evidently intended originally for a banquet hall and not a den of thieves. However, he was not long in doubt as to what to do, for he slipped the poniard from its sheath, and began to cut a hole through the wood in front of him and it did not take him long to have a place large enough to see perfectly what was going on below. He took one long earnest look.

"Gosh," he muttered to himself, "what a chance, what a chance; if I only had my revolver with me, I'd corner that gang in short order." And so he would.

Now this is what he saw, by the light of a mammoth fireplace filled with great logs that sent a weird, but beautiful light glowing and then wavering in shadows across the high arched ceiling. A few feet back from the wide high fireplace with its roaring flame were four men playing cards. They sat around a table, and three in appearance were villainous cutthroats, probably Mexicans by their dark visages, swaggeringly armed with knives and revolvers, with gaudy handkerchiefs knotted at their throats.

The firelight showed the flash of their cruel eyes and teeth at some stroke of fortune in the play, and Jim, who was not unaccustomed to see and deal with dubious citizens, felt that right below him was the hardest bunch that ill fortune had ever brought across his path. He was not forgetting either the Apaches with whom he and his brothers had enjoyed more than one fracas in the great Southwest.

But what the observer regarded with greatest interest was a group of three well back in the shadow, and he needed none to tell him who that short, squat figure was. He held a guitar, and was accompanying his own songs while the other two joined in the refrain. It was his bÊte noir, the Mexican dwarf who had recently robbed him, and out-maneuvered him on two occasions at least.

Strange to say that if you did not see him, and only heard his voice you would be certain that he was a lithe, Spanish cavalier, of the "oh Juanita" type of lover, for his tone was neither guttural nor harsh but smooth and melodious, and to-night for some reason he was inclined to sentimental songs of the serenade kind, but this reason was soon to appear.

"Who gets the SeÑorita Manuel, the one who came in the carriage this evening, as though to a ball?" queried one of the players at the card table. The words were spoken at an interval between games.

Jim almost stood up in his sudden enlightenment and wrath but he bethought himself in time and with whitened knuckles he drove the poniard held in his hand deep into the wood of the floor. This, in a mild way served to express his feelings. At the question the dwarf swaggered into the full light of the fire.

"I, Manuel de Gorzaga, will have the seÑorita, my voice will charm her, and my money please her."

Jim could hardly restrain a scornful laugh at the audacity of the dwarf, but he noticed that though the others regarded him askance they did not ridicule him, but seemed to have a certain fear of his malignity, and his cunning craft. Jim saw that he was clean shaven now and that he moved his head back and forth in front of his hump, like an ugly hooded bird, and his shadow was distorted on the high vaulted ceiling into something horrible and of ill omen. To complete the picture, it is necessary to say that he was dressed in gorgeous fashion in a suit of slashed velvet, and a resplendent sash around his waist.

There was a marvelous celerity in his every movement, so that he was like nothing so much as a richly colored spider, that darts from shadow to pounce upon its victim. Jim vowed that he would not leave the castle that night until the SeÑorita da Cordova, if a prisoner, was freed from the power of this contemptible creature. But he was to find the adventure which he had planned more difficult than was expected and that was saying a good deal.

"How about the seÑorita's nice little nurse, SeÑor Manuel da Gorzaga?" questioned one of the card players, with a sneer. "Perchance that person may have something to say to your pretensions."

The dwarf regarded his questioner with a venomous look and then spat emphatically on the floor, but he gave no reply except by an expressive drawing of his fingers across his throat.

"The Duenna's throat is iron," replied the other speaker to this pantomime; "she guards the captain's treasures like the dragon the golden apples."

"I, too, am valuable to that old shark of the seas," replied the Mexican, in most uncomplimentary terms to his master captain, William Broome. "I know his many secrets, and it was I, Manuel, who got the treasure from that long-legged, white-headed gringo" (Jim grinned at this description of himself), "who would make one meal of the brave captain if it were not for me, who am too wise for his thick head."

"Good for you, Humpty Dumpty," said Jim, under his breath, "you won't have to hire anybody to blow your trumpet for you. Sorry I can't stay, old chap, to hear the rest of your interesting and eloquent speech."