“I beg your pardon,” said Hurlstone, in confused and remorseful apology; “but I frankly confess that my thoughts were preoccupied.  Pray forgive me.  If you will leave these papers with me, I promise to devote myself to them another time.”

“As you please,” said the Senor, with a slight return of his old affability.  “But don’t bore yourself now.  Let us go on deck.”

He passed out of the cabin as Hurlstone glanced, half mechanically, at the package before him.  Suddenly his cheek reddened; he stopped, looked hurriedly at the retreating form of Perkins, and picked up a manuscript from the packet.  It was in his wife’s handwriting.  A sudden idea flashed across his mind, and seemed to illuminate the obscure monotony of the story he had just heard.  He turned hurriedly to the morocco case, and opened it with trembling fingers.  It was a daguerreotype, faded and silvered; but the features were those of his wife!

CHAPTER VIII.

Hostage.

The revolution of Todos Santos had to all appearances been effected as peacefully as the gentle Liberator of Quinquinambo could have wished.  Two pronunciamientos, rudely printed and posted in the Plaza, and saluted by the fickle garrison of one hundred men, who had, however, immediately reappointed their old commander as Generalissimo under the new regime, seemed to leave nothing to be desired.  A surging mob of vacant and wondering peons, bearing a singular resemblance to the wild cattle and horses which intermingled with them in blind and unceasing movement across the Plaza and up the hilly street, and seemingly as incapable of self-government, were alternately dispersed and stampeded or allowed to gather again as occasion required.  Some of these heterogeneous bands were afterwards found—­the revolution accomplished—­gazing stupidly on the sea, or ruminating in bovine wantonness on the glacis before the Presidio.

Eleanor Keene, who with her countrywomen had been hurried to the refuge of the Mission, was more disturbed and excited at the prospect of meeting Hurlstone again than by any terror of the insurrection.  But Hurlstone was not there, and Father Esteban received her with a coldness she could not attribute entirely to her countrymen’s supposed sympathy with the insurgents.  When Richard Keene, who would not leave his sister until he had seen her safe under the Mission walls, ventured at her suggestion to ask after the American recluse, Father Esteban replied dryly that, being a Christian gentleman, Hurlstone was the only one who had the boldness to seek out the American filibuster Perkins, on his own ship, and remonstrate with him for his unholy crusade.  For the old priest had already become aware of Hurlstone’s blunder, and he hated Eleanor as the primary cause of the trouble.  But for her, Diego would be still with him in this emergency.

“Never mind, Nell,” said Dick, noticing the disappointed eyes of his sister as they parted, “you’ll all be safe here until we return.  Between you and me, Banks, Brimmer, and I think that Brace and Winslow have gone too far in this matter, and we’re going to stop it, unless the whole thing is over now, as they say.”