they wish to hold one so young?"

Edward Fulton did not reply because he saw that Stephen Austin was
speaking to himself rather than his companion. Instead, he looked once
more through the window and over the city at the vast white peaks of
Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl silent and immutable, forever guarding the
sky-line. Yet they seemed to call to him at this moment and tell him of
freedom. The words of the man had touched a spring within him and he
wanted to go. He could not conceal from himself the fact that he longed
for liberty with every pulse and fiber. But he resolved, nevertheless,
to stay. He would not desert the one whom he had come to serve.

Stephen Austin, the real founder of Texas, had now been in prison in
Mexico more than a year. Coming to Saltillo to secure for the Texans
better treatment from the Mexicans, their rulers, he had been seized and
held as a criminal. The boy, Edward Fulton, was not really his nephew,
but an orphan, the son of a cousin. He owed much to Austin and coming to
the capital to help him he was sharing his imprisonment.

"They say that Santa Anna now has the power," said Ned, breaking the
somber silence.

"It is true," said Stephen Austin, "and it is a new and strong reason
why I fear for our people. Of all the cunning and ambitious men in
Mexico, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna is the most cunning and ambitious. I
know, too, that he is the most able, and I believe that he is the most
dangerous to those of us who have settled in Texas. What a country is
this Mexico! Revolution after revolution! You make a treaty with one
president to-day and to-morrow another disclaims it! More than one of
them has a touch of genius, and yet it is obscured by childishness and