“I never saw anything finer than this,” said Ned, aloud, as he slowly turned his telescope from one point to another. “It is the old battle-ground of Cortes, when he and his Spaniards and Tlascalans took the city of Mexico. It was called Tenochtitlan, then.”

He was standing upon a granite ledge, on the slope of the mountains south of the city, and below him the nearest objects of interest were the white tents of the American army, encamped there while negotiations for peace were going forward between the United States government and Santa Anna. These were not progressing well, for the invaders were demanding more than any Mexican government could be ready to grant. Not only was Texas itself demanded, but with it also all the vast Territories of California, New Mexico, and Arizona.

“Here we are,” said Ned again, “but it has taken us two weeks of awful fighting to get here. There isn’t any use in disputing the pluck of the Mexicans. Away yonder is Churubusco, and over there is Contreras. Didn’t they fight us there! General Scott and his engineers laid out the battles, but I was with the Seventh everywhere it went. I’ll have loads of yarns to spin when I get home, if I ever do.”

Battle after battle had been fought, and the Americans had paid dearly for the long delay in the arrival of their reinforcements. All that time had been employed by the Mexican President, with really splendid energy, in raising a new army and in fortifying the approaches to the city. It was almost pitiful to see with what patriotism and self-sacrifice the Mexican people rallied for their last hopeless struggle with superior power. It was not, however, that they were to contend with superior numbers, for the forces under Santa Anna were at least three times those under General Scott. The difference was that the latter was a perfect army led by a great general, while the former were not an army at all and had very few capable officers.

Ned had apparently gazed long enough, and he now made his way down the rugged slope. He did not halt until he reached the door of his own tent, and there he was met by his friend and supervisor somewhat tartly.

“Well! You are back, at last, are you? I didn’t know but what you’d run away. You may come along with me to-night. You may try and see your friends. The provision train I am to take in will get out again about daylight. You may stay there one day, and come away with a train that will run in to-morrow night, but you’d better wear your Mexican rig, if you don’t mean to have your throat cut.”

“All right, sir,” said Ned. “I’ll run the risk.”

“I might not let you,” said Grant, “if you were an enlisted man, but you may learn something of value to them and to us, too. Get ready!”

The fact was that Ned and his army, commanded for him by General Scott, were in a somewhat peculiar position. An armistice had been declared while the negotiations were going on, and while, at the same time, the power of Santa Anna was crumbling to pieces under him. It had been agreed, on both sides, that all military operations should temporarily cease, and that American army-trains of wagons might come into the city, with armed escorts, to obtain supplies. After some unpleasant experiences with the angry mob of the city, it had been deemed best that the trains should come and go in the night, when the unruly Mexican soldiers were in their quarters, and the too patriotic citizens were in their beds. Ned had several times asked permission to accompany a train, and it had been refused, but it was now explained that this train would like to have one more man with it who could talk Spanish. When, however, an hour or so later, he reported for duty, Lieutenant Grant remarked to him:

“Well, yes, you can talk it and you can look it, but you can’t walk it. Don’t step off so lively, if you mean to pass for a Mexican.”

“Hold on, Grant,” said another officer, standing near them. “Don’t you think the Mexicans have been lively enough since we left Perote? I’ve had to step around a good deal myself on their account.”

“Just so,” said Grant. “But that’s while they’re fighting. When they’re at anything like work, though, it’s a different kind of movement. Don’t walk fast, Ned, or they’ll shoot you for a gringo.”

It was nearly midnight when the supply-train, commanded by Lieutenant Grant, entered the city, and an hour was consumed in obtaining the supplies and getting them into the wagons, for not a pound of anything had been made ready for delivery. No true-hearted Mexican really wished to sell provisions to the enemies of his country.

“Lieutenant, may I go now?” asked Ned, as the last wagon prepared to move away. “There isn’t a patrol in sight, and the Paez place is within a few squares from this.”

Grant replied only by a wave of the hand, for at that moment he had become engaged in a sharp controversy with the one Mexican officer who was present on duty for his own side. He had been fairly polite, but he had not pretended to be pleased to see gringos in Mexico. Therefore, it was almost without express permission that Ned slipped away from his train and his escort upon his exceedingly perilous errand.

The streets were dark and deserted, for the heavy-hearted people had nothing to call them out of their houses at that hour. Nevertheless, Ned was feverishly on the alert, and, almost without his knowing it, his machete had jumped out of its sheath, ready for whatever might turn up.

“Halt!” suddenly came from a deep voice at his right, as he stealthily turned a street corner, and a tall form stepped out of the near shadows to stand in front of him.

Ned saw the long, bright blade of a lance pointed at his bosom, and there seemed but one thing left for him to do. The holder of the lance was beyond his reach, even if he had wished to strike him, but the lance itself was not. All the strength he had in him seemed to go into the sudden blow with which he severed the wooden shaft, an inch or so behind its fitting of sharp steel.

“Diablos!” exclaimed the astonished Mexican, as he struck back a heavy blow with the cudgel which remained in his hand.

Ned parried as well as he could with his machete, but there was some force left in the stick when it reached his head, and down he went. He had made a discovery at that very moment, however.

“Pablo!” he exclaimed, just as a second Mexican sprang toward him with a long knife in his hand.

“SeÑor Carfora!” loudly responded Pablo. “Hold back your knife, Manuelo! It is one of our own men. O Santos! My lance! I have no other weapon. I told them it was of the soft wood. How are you here, seÑor?”

“To see SeÑora Paez and General Zuroaga,” said Ned. “Is he in the city?”

“Hush! Be careful, SeÑor Carfora!” said Pablo, as Manuelo almost reluctantly sheathed his too ready long knife. “We were waiting here for him. He has been to the palace, to meet General Bravo. Our regiment has already joined the army, but he is not yet sure about Santa Anna and some other men. It is a dark time, seÑor!”

“Now, Pablo,” said Ned, “there isn’t much to tell about me. I was captured when Vera Cruz surrendered. I was with General Morales. I got in to-night, and I have a great deal to say to the general and SeÑora Paez and the Tassaras.”

“Zuroaga is here now,” said a low, cautiously speaking voice behind him. “Put up your sword, Carfora, and come along with me. I want to see you more than you do me. I must know the latest news from General Scott’s army. Pablo, it was of no use. Santa Anna would make no terms with me, but his day is nearly over. Bravo’s government has rejected the treaty offered by the United States, and we are to fight it out to the bitter end. The gates have been shut, and there will be no more sending out of supplies. I think the war will begin again to-morrow.”

“Oh, dear me!” thought Ned. “There goes all my chance for getting out again until after our army has captured the city. How my head does ache!”

The rap from Pablo’s lance-staff had not really injured him, however, and all three of them walked on till they reached the Paez place without saying another word. Here it was at once evident that they, or, at least, the general and Pablo, were waited for. The front door opened to admit them, and shut quickly behind them as they passed in.

“SeÑora Paez,” said Zuroaga to a shadow in the unlighted hall, “the armistice is ended, but I shall command my Oaxaca regiment in the fighting which is now sure to come. Let us all meet in the parlor and hear from SeÑor Carfora the American account of these lost battles.”

“Carfora?” she exclaimed. “Is he here? Oh, how I do wish to hear him! I believe we have been told altogether too many lies. Our troops do not half know how badly they have been beaten, nor what is the real strength of the American army.”

They walked on into the parlor, and here there were lights burning, but Ned was not thinking of them. He was gazing at the pale face of a man in uniform and on crutches, who came slowly forward between a woman and a young girl, with a mournful smile upon his face.

“Colonel Tassara!” exclaimed Ned. “I knew you were wounded, but are you not getting well?”

“SeÑor Carfora!” quickly interrupted SeÑorita Felicia. “He was hit in the leg by a bullet at Angostura. He had a bayonet wound, too, and they thought he would die, but they made him a general—”

“I am getting better, Carfora,” said General Tassara, courageously, “but I can do no more fighting just now. I sincerely wish that there might not be any. The plans of Santa Anna—”

“Tassara!” exclaimed Zuroaga. “What we heard is true. He is utterly ruined. But the peace terms are rejected by all the government we have left, and our city defences must soon go down as did those at Cerro Gordo, Contreras, and Churubusco. We are to hear more about those affairs from SeÑor Carfora. He was an eye witness of them.”

“Oh, my dear young friend,” said SeÑora Tassara, “were you with the American army in all those battles?”

“No, not exactly,” said Ned. “I was with General Morales at Vera Cruz. Then I came on with General Scott all the way from the seacoast to this place. He has troops enough now, and he will fight his way in. I’m real sorry about it, too, for no more men need to be killed.”

“I think the gringos are just terrible,” said Felicia, as she came over and sat down by Ned. “I want to hear about them. I do hope they won’t be defeated now, though, for if they are nobody can guess who will be Emperor of Mexico when they are driven away.”

“She is not so far wrong,” said Tassara, sadly. “The future of our country is all in the dark. Please let us hear your report.”

Pablo, of course, had not followed his superiors into the parlor, and all who were there were free to discuss the situation. The morning sun was looking in at the windows when all of the talk was finished. Ned had learned that only the family and a few trusted servants remained in the house, but he would have eaten his breakfast with even a more complete sense of security from any emissaries of the military authorities if he had known how much they had upon their hands that day, the 4th of September, 1847. There had already been a sharp correspondence between the commanders of the two armies, and now General Scott himself declared the armistice at an end. All the angry patriotism of the Mexican people arose to meet the emergency, and every possible preparation was rapidly made for the last desperate struggle in defence of their capital. It was as if the idea prevailed that, if this American force now here could be defeated, the United States would give the matter up, instead of sending more troops to the assistance of their first insufficient battalions.

“SeÑor Carfora,” said Senorita Felicia, “you must not go out of the house. I do not want you to be killed.”

“That is so,” added her father. “As the affair stands now, they would surely regard you as a spy. You would be shot without a trial. All is confusion. I fear that even General Zuroaga is safe from arrest only among his own men. The army is the government. This nation needs a change.”

“General Tassara,” said Ned, “isn’t our army bringing one?”

“The war is promising a great deal,” replied Tassara, gloomily. “It has already delivered us from King Paredes and Santa Anna and from half a dozen other military usurpers. Moreover, all the lands which the United States propose to take away will be rescued from any future anarchy and will be made some use of. They will be lost to Mexico forever within one week from to-day, for we cannot hold the city.”

General Zuroaga had quietly disappeared. Very soon, the Tassara family went to their own room. Then not even the servants could tell what had become of SeÑora Paez. Ned Crawford did not at all know what to do with himself. He walked around the rooms below; then he went out to the stables and back again, but he was all alone, for Pablo and the Oaxaca men had gone to their regiment. He went up to the library and had a one-sided talk with the man in armor, but it did not do him any good, and he did not care a cent for all the books on the shelves. They could tell only of old wars, fought long ago, and here was a real war right on hand, that seemed to be wandering all around the house.

During all the long, hot days of the armistice, a kind of dull quiet had appeared to brood over the city and its forts and over the camps and entrenchments of the besiegers. It had been something like a thundercloud, which was all the while growing blacker and hanging lower, and before the end of the first day of renewed hostilities the anxious watchers in the city houses could hear something which sounded like distant thunder. It was the occasional roar of a gun from one or another of the batteries on either side, as a warning of the more terrible things which were about to come, and more than once Ned groaned to himself:

“Oh, how I wish I were out there, with Lieutenant Grant and the Seventh. This is worse than being shut up in Vera Cruz. I didn’t have any regiment of my own, then, but now I belong in General Scott’s army.”

Evening came at last, and all of the family was gathered behind the lattices of the parlor windows, to watch the detachments of soldiers march past, and to wonder where they were going. General Zuroaga was not there, but there had been a message from him that there would be a great battle in the morning, for the Americans were moving forward.

“We are in greater numbers than they are,” muttered General Tassara. “But we have no General Scott, and we have no officers like his. Almost all that we really have is courage and gunpowder, and these are not enough to defeat such an attack as he will make. The city is lost already!”