“G’wan!” he commanded harshly.  “I saw it first.”  McGuire slunk away, awed by superior intelligence.

“Pardon me,” said Mr. Kelley, to the General, “but you got balled up in the shuffle, didn’t you?  Let me assist you.”  He picked up the General’s hat and brushed the dust from it.

The ways of Mr. Kelley could not but succeed.  The General, bewildered and dismayed by the resounding streets, welcomed his deliverer as a caballero with a most disinterested heart.

“I have a desire,” said the General, “to return to the hotel of O’Brien, in which I am stop.  Caramba! senor, there is a loudness and rapidness of going and coming in the city of this Nueva York.”

Mr. Kelley’s politeness would not suffer the distinguished Colombian to brave the dangers of the return unaccompanied.  At the door of the Hotel Espanol they paused.  A little lower down on the opposite side of the street shone the modest illuminated sign of El Refugio.  Mr. Kelley, to whom few streets were unfamiliar, knew the place exteriorly as a “Dago joint.”  All foreigners Mr. Kelley classed under the two heads of “Dagoes” and Frenchmen.  He proposed to the General that they repair thither and substantiate their acquaintance with a liquid foundation.

An hour later found General Falcon and Mr. Kelley seated at a table in the conspirator’s corner of El Refugio.  Bottles and glasses were between them.  For the tenth time the General confided the secret of his mission to the Estados Unidos.  He was here, he declared, to purchase arms—­2,000 stands of Winchester rifles—­for the Colombian revolutionists.  He had drafts in his pocket drawn by the Cartagena Bank on its New York correspondent for $25,000.  At other tables other revolutionists were shouting their political secrets to their fellow-plotters; but none was as loud as the General.  He pounded the table; he hallooed for some wine; he roared to his friend that his errand was a secret one, and not to be hinted at to a living soul.  Mr. Kelley himself was stirred to sympathetic enthusiasm.  He grasped the General’s hand across the table.

“Monseer,” he said, earnestly, “I don’t know where this country of yours is, but I’m for it.  I guess it must be a branch of the United States, though, for the poetry guys and the schoolmarms call us Columbia, too, sometimes.  It’s a lucky thing for you that you butted into me to-night.  I’m the only man in New York that can get this gun deal through for you.  The Secretary of War of the United States is me best friend.  He’s in the city now, and I’ll see him for you to-morrow.  In the meantime, monseer, you keep them drafts tight in your inside pocket.  I’ll call for you to-morrow, and take you to see him.  Say! that ain’t the District of Columbia you’re talking about, is it?” concluded Mr. Kelley, with a sudden qualm.  “You can’t capture that with no 2,000 guns—­it’s been tried with more.”

“No, no, no!” exclaimed the General.  “It is the Republic of Colombia—­it is a g-r-reat republic on the top side of America of the South.  Yes.  Yes.”