away the faint rattle of a saber, probably some officer of Santa Anna
who was going to a place outside a lattice, the sharp cry of a Mexican
upbraiding his lazy mule, and the distant note of a woman singing an old
Spanish song. It was as dark as ever, with the clouds rolling over the
great valley of Tenochtitlan, which had seen so much of human passion
and woe. Ned, brave and resolute as he was, shivered. He was oppressed
by the night and the place. It seemed to him, for the moment, that the
ghosts of stern Cortez, and of the Aztecs themselves were walking out
there.

Then he did a characteristic thing. Folding his arms in front of him he
grasped his own elbows and shook himself fiercely. The effort of will
and body banished the shapes and illusions, and he went to work with
firm hands.

He tore the coverings from his bed into strips, and knotted them
together stoutly, trying each knot by tying the strip to the bar, and
pulling on it with all his strength. He made his rope at least thirty
feet long and then gave it a final test, knot by knot. He judged that it
was now near midnight and the skies were still very dark. Inside of a
half hour he would be gone--to what? He was seized with an intense
yearning to wake up Mr. Austin and tell him good-by. The Texan leader
had been so good to him, he would worry so much about him that it was
almost heartless to slip away in this manner. But he checked the
impulse again, and went swiftly ahead with his work.

He kept on nothing but his underclothing and trousers. The rest he made
up into a small package which he tied upon his back. He was sorry that
he did not have any weapon. He had been deprived of even his
pocket-knife, but he did have a few dollars of Spanish coinage, which he