at all, or we may learn too late. Then all's conjecture. They fight like
fiends, and day by day we lose. What if they overbear us yet?"

Don Luiz brought his gaze from the ceiling to meet the look of the
lesser man. Mexia fidgeted, at last burst forth: "There are times when
the devil dwells in your eye and upon your lip! 'Twas so you smiled in
the Valdez matter and when that slave girl died! What do you mean?"

"Mean?" answered De Guardiola, still smiling. "I mean, my friend, that
we must know what traps they bait down yonder." He called to those who
waited without, wrote an order and sent it to the officer in command at
the battery. "Up goes one traitor's signal!... Good Pedro, when Fate
gives to you your enemy; says, 'Now! Revenge yourself to the
uttermost!'--what do you do?"

"Why, I take his life," answered Mexia. "Then shall he trouble me no
more."

"Now I," said Don Luiz, "I give him memories of me. Mayhap the dead do
not remember. So live my foe! but live in hell, remembering the brand
upon thy soul and that it was I who set it glowing there!"

"Well, I am thy friend, am I not?" quoth Mexia, comfortably. "I am not
Englishman nor Valdez nor Cimmaroon slave, and so I fear not thy smile.
It is twelve of the clock.... Do you think that Desmond knows so much?"

"Not more than one other," answered De Guardiola, and called for a flask
of wine.

The day wore on in heat and light, white glare from the hill, and from