“Hullo, young man! I’ve been looking for you. How are you?”

“Captain Kemp!” shouted Ned, in astonishment. “Where did you come from? Who dreamed of seeing you here?”

“Nobody, I hope,” said the captain; “but here I am, and I’ve brought you half a dozen letters. They are among my baggage. First thing, though, tell me all about yourself. Where have you been?”

They were standing in the grand plaza, not many paces from the front of the cathedral, and Ned had come there for another look at the building which had taken the place of the old-time temple of the murderous Mexican god of war. He was wildly excited for a moment, and he began to ask questions, rather than to tell anything about himself.

“Keep cool, now, my boy,” said the captain. “We don’t know who’s watching us. I didn’t have much trouble in running the Yankee blockade at Vera Cruz. I brought a cargo from New York, just as if it had been sent from Liverpool, but I’ve had to prove that I’m not an American ever since I came ashore. Spin us your yarn as we walk along.”

Ned was now ready to do so, and the captain listened to him with the most intense interest, putting in remarks every now and then.

“All this,” he said, “is precisely what your father wishes you to do, if you can do it. The way of it is this. He knows, and we all know, that this war can’t be a long one. As soon as it’s over, his concern means to go into the Mexican trade heavier than they ever did before. They think it will be worth more, and I mean to be in it myself. So it just suits him to have you here, making friends and learning all about the country you are to deal with. He says you are in the best kind of business school. There will be a fortune in it for you some day.”

“I don’t exactly see how,” remarked Ned, doubtfully.

“Well,” replied the captain, “not many young American business men know ten cents’ worth about Mexico. You’d better go right on and learn all there is to know. Keep shy of all politics, though. This war is going to break Paredes and a lot of others. After they are out of power, your own friends, like Tassara, Zuroaga, and the rest of them, may be in office, and you will be in clover. It’s a wonderfully rich country, if it were only in the right hands and had a good government. I’ll give you the letters when we get to my lodgings. Then I must make my way back to Vera Cruz, but I had to come all this distance to get my pay from the authorities. I obtained it, even now, only by promising to bring over another cargo of British gunpowder, to fight the Yankees with.”

That was a thing which Ned did not like, but he could not do anything to prevent it. He could not expect an Englishman to be an American, and it was all a matter of trade to Captain Kemp, aside from his personal friendship for Ned and his father. There was more talk of all sorts, and Ned obtained a great deal of information concerning the war and what the United States were likely to do. After he had received his precious letters, however, and had said good-by to Captain Kemp, he almost ran against people in his haste to reach the Paez mansion. He did not pause to speak to anybody on arriving, but darted up-stairs and made his way to the library. It was lighter now in the wonderful book-room, and the man in armor did not say anything as Ned came in. In a moment he was in the chair by the window, and he appeared to himself to be almost talking with the dear ones at home, from whom he had so long been separated.

“Stay where you are,” he read from his father’s long letter, and at that hour he felt as if he did not wish to stay. He dropped the letter on the table, and leaned back in his chair and looked around him. Pretty soon, however, a little slowly to begin with, but then faster and faster, the strong and fascinating spirit of adventure came once more upon him. His very blood tingled, and he sprang to his feet to all but shout to his mailed acquaintance in the corner:

“Yes, sir, I’ll stay! I’ll do anything but become a Mexican. Tell you what, before the war’s over, I mean to be in the American army, somehow. I don’t exactly see how I’m to do it, though.”

It was time to go down-stairs and report to his faithful friends, for he knew it would be very mean not to do so, and the first person he met was SeÑora Tassara herself.

“I have letters from home!” he exclaimed, bluntly—“newspapers, too!” and she held up both hands in astonishment, as she responded:

“Letters from the United States? How on earth did they come through the blockade, and how did they know where you are?”

“I guess they didn’t,” said Ned. “The English captain that used to command the Goshawk brought them. I met him at the plaza, hunting for me. He was a friend of General Zuroaga, and besides, the British consul at Vera Cruz knew I was with Colonel Tassara’s family. So, if I hadn’t met him, he would have tried to find you. My father writes that I am to stay in Mexico, and learn all about it.”

“I am glad of that,” she said. “Why, you could not get out at all just now without danger to yourself and getting all of us into trouble.”

“I wouldn’t do that for anything!” exclaimed Ned, and then he went on with his tremendous budget of miscellaneous news.

It was an exceedingly interesting heap of information, for the captain had given him both English and American journals, which were a rare treat at that time in the interior of the beleaguered Mexican republic. SeÑora Tassara was busy with these, when Ned and all the other news-bringers were pounced upon by a yet more eager inquirer.

“SeÑor Carfora!” exclaimed Felicia, her black eyes flashing curiously at him. “Where did you get them? I never before saw such big newspapers. They won’t tell us about our army, though.”

“Yes, they will,” he said, and, while she was searching the broad-faced prints for army information, he repeated for her benefit all that he had previously told her mother. Poor SeÑorita Felicia! She did not obtain at all what she wanted, for there were no accounts of brilliant Mexican victories. All of these must have been meanly omitted by the editors, and at last she angrily threw down a newspaper to say to him:

“SeÑor Carfora, I am glad you are to stay here, but you will never be anything better than a gringo, no matter how much you learn. I was up in the library this morning, and I pulled out six more books for you. You may read them all, if they will do you any good. One of them is about Spain, too. What I want to do is to travel all over Spain. It must be the most beautiful country in the world.”

Ned had noticed long ago that her eyes always grew dreamy whenever her thoughts were turned toward the peninsula which has had so wonderful a history, but he did not know that his own longings for foreign travel were very like her own in their origin when he replied:

“Well, I’d like to see Spain. I mean to some day, but I want to see England first, and Scotland and Ireland. One of my ancestors was an Irishman, and the Crawfords were from Scotland. It isn’t as hot a country as Spain is. You are a Mexican, not a Spaniard.”

“So I am,” she said, “and most of the Mexicans are Indians. We ought to have more Spaniards, but we can’t get them. Anyhow, we don’t want too many gringos to come in. They are all heretics, too.”

Ned knew what she meant, and he hastened to tell her that his country contained more church people of her religion than Mexico did, and he added, to her great disgust:

“And our priests are a hundred times better than yours are. General Zuroaga says so, and so does your father. I don’t like your Mexican priests. The general says he wishes they were all dead, and their places filled by good, live men from Europe and the United States.”

“Felicia,” interrupted her mother, “you must not talk with SeÑor Carfora about such things. What I wish is that we had the American common schools all over our poor, ignorant country. Oh, dear! What if this horrible war should prove to be really a blessing to us? As things look now, we are to have another revolution within a year. More men will be shot, just as they have been before, and nobody can see what the end is to be.”

It was now time for the noonday luncheon, and they went to the dining-room, where SeÑora Paez herself was glad to see the foreign journals and to know that Ned had letters from home.

Many things appeared to be settled, as far as he was concerned. At all events, his mind was no longer to busy itself with wild plans for squirming out from among the Aztecs and finding his way to the United States. After luncheon he went up to the library again. At first it was only to read his letters over and over, and then it was a kind of relief to go to his books and try to forget everything else in going on with his queer schooling. It was unlike any that his old schoolmates at the North were having, and he caught himself wondering what kind of man it might make of him. He could not tell, but he was to have yet another lesson that day, and with it came a promise of a strange kind of vacation.

It came to him in the evening, when he was so tired of books that he preferred the company of SeÑorita Felicia, no matter what saucy or overpatriotic things she might see fit to say to him. They were sitting near one of the drawing-room windows, when SeÑora Paez came quietly behind him and touched him on the shoulder.

“Come with me,” she said. “There is a man up in SeÑora Tassara’s room who wishes to see you.”

“O SeÑor Carfora!” whispered Felicia. “Don’t say a word! I know who it is. Go right along. He is an old friend of yours.”

Up jumped Ned, and he and the seÑorita followed SeÑora Paez eagerly. Half a minute later, he felt as if he had never been so astonished before in all his life, for his hand was heartily grasped, and the voice of General Zuroaga said to him:

“Here I am, SeÑor Carfora. How are you?”

“Oh, but I’m glad to see you!” exclaimed Ned. “I’m all right, but isn’t it awfully dangerous for you to be here?”

“It would be, if some men knew it,” replied Zuroaga, “or if I were unwise enough to remain too long. The fact is that I can give you only a few minutes, anyhow, this evening. I must be out of the city before daylight, if I can, but I will return at the end of a week or so. Then I shall take you with me to the valley of the Tehuantepec. You must see all that region. After that I shall have a tour to make on political affairs, through several States, and you will have a chance to see two thirds of the republic before winter.”

“That is just what my father would wish me to do,” said Ned, and he proceeded to tell the general the contents of his letters and all the news he had heard from Captain Kemp.

“Very good!” said Zuroaga, at last. “I would have been glad to have seen the captain. He is a rough sort of fellow, but he can be depended on. It is evident that your father’s firm trusts him, but I believe they do not know exactly all that he has been doing. He is quite willing to make a few dollars for himself while he is working for others.”

The general was in good spirits, but more than once he spoke of the necessity he was under of keeping out of the reach of his old enemies, and among these he appeared to consider the absent Santa Anna even more dangerous, in the long run, than President Paredes himself. SeÑora Tassara had now joined them, but she seemed disposed to be silent, and most of the conversation was in the hands of SeÑora Paez. It was noticeable that she appeared to have a remarkably good knowledge of the politics of her country. Perhaps, if Ned had been a few years older and the least bit of a politician, he might have suspected the truth, that she was one of the most subtle plotters in the whole country. If she was also a deadly enemy of President Paredes, it was because she was a sister of a revolutionary leader whom he had caused to be shot, years ago, without the formality of a court-martial. Ned saw her eyes flash and her bosom heave when she spoke of him, and after that he somehow felt safer than ever under her roof. He also saw that she and General Zuroaga were the best of friends, and that they had a long private conference of their own.

“I guess he feels at home here,” thought Ned, as he went down-stairs with Felicia and SeÑora Tassara, and his confidence in that state of affairs grew stronger as he walked along the central hall of the house.

“Pablo!” he exclaimed, to a man who lay sprawled out upon the floor, but the general’s Oaxaca follower made him no reply. He and three more like him, who lay near him, were sound asleep, and there was no good cause for stirring them up just then.

“They are all well armed,” said Ned to himself. “The general will be protected when he rides away in the morning. But this is the biggest kind of thing to come to me. The best I can do will be to take to my books till he gets back. Oh, but won’t it be grand fun to make a complete tour of the mountains and of all the Pacific coast of Mexico? He says I shall see the tallest peaks of the Cordilleras and that I may visit some of the great silver mines.”

With all that exciting expectation running through his head, it was not easy for him to get to sleep that night. When he arose in the morning, his friend, the mysterious general, had already departed.