fowler’s net, yet now and again a bird of the air fluttered through their meshes.  The paper which Don Luiz held ran as follows:  “May not a countryman of heretics choose his own king?  When Death peers too closely—­as was the case upon the galleon San Jose—­may not a man turn his coat and send Death seeking elsewhere?  Death gone by, may not the man be willing (if it be so that he is not well entreated of his new masters) to take again the colors to which on a Corpus Christi day of which you wot he swore fealty?  At sunrise this morning the English laid toils for you.  I have knowledge to sell.  Will you buy my wares with five thousand pesos of silver and the letter to Cartagena which I desired?...  I wrap this in a fig-leaf and drop it from the window to Dolores laughing with the seamen below.  If you will buy, then raise above the battery a pennant of red that may be seen from the room with the hidden door in the Friar’s House.”

“The dog!  I thought that he perished with Antonio de Castro!” spoke Mexia.

“That he did not,” answered the Governor.  “He is so false that were there none else with whom to play the traitor, his right hand would betray his left....  The English called him Francis Sark.”

“You’ll pay?”

“He shall think I’ll pay,” said the other.  “So they lay their toils!—­it needs not this paper to tell me that;” he tapped it as it lay before him.  “Somewhat will this Englishman, this Nevil, do to-night.  He hath his game in his mind,—­his hand on this piece, his eye on that, these pawns in reserve, those advanced for action.”  De Guardiola leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling.  “Ha, Pedro! we must discover what he would do!  When I know his dispositions, blessed Mother of God, what check may I not give him!”

“But if Desmond escapes not,” began the duller Mexia, “we may learn not 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!”