All hands among the visitors passed the afternoon dully.  Mr. Brewster, who had finally yielded to persuasion and decided not to venture out, though still deriding the restriction as the merest nonsense, was in a mood of restless silence, which his irrepressible daughter described to Fitzhugh Carroll as “the superior sulks.”

Carroll himself kept pretty much aloof.  He had the air of a man who wrestles with a problem.  Cluff fussed and fretted and privately cursed the country and all its concessions.  Between calls and the telephone, Sherwen was kept constantly busy.  But a few minutes before six, central, in the blandest Spanish, regretted to inform him that Puerto del Norte was cut off.  When would service be resumed?  Quien sabe?  It was an order.  Hasta manana.  To-morrow, perhaps.  Smoothing a furrow from his brow, the sight of which would have done nobody any good, he suggested that they all gather on the roof porch for a swizzle.  The suggestion was hailed with enthusiasm.

Thus, when the Unspeakable Perk came hustling down the street some minutes earlier than the appointed time, he was hailed in Sherwen’s voice, and bidden to come directly up.  No time, on this occasion, for Miss Polly to escape.  She decided in one breath to ignore the man entirely; in the next to bow coldly and walk out; in the next to—­He was there before the latest wavering decision could be formulated.

“Better all get inside,” he said a little breathlessly.  “There may be trouble.”

Cluff brightened perceptibly.

“What kind of trouble?”

“Urgante is leading a mob up this way.  They’re turning the corner now.”

“I’m going to wait and see them,” cried Miss Polly, with decision.

“Bend over, then, all of you,” ordered Sherwen.  “The vines will cover you if you keep down.”

Around the corner, up the hill from where they were, streamed a rabble of boys, leaping and whooping, and after them a more compact crowd of men, shoeless, centering on a tall, broad, heavy-mustached fellow who bore on a short staff the Stars and Stripes.

“Where on earth did he get that?” cried Sherwen.

“Looted the Bazaar Americana,” replied Perkins.

“That’s Urgante,” growled Cluff; “that devil with the flag.”

“But he seems to be eulogizing it,” cried the girl.

The orator had set down his bright burden, wedging it in the iron guard railing of a tree, and was now apostrophizing it with extravagant bows and honeyed accents in which there was an undertone of hiss.  For confirmation, Miss Polly turned to the others.  The first face her eyes fell on was that of the ball-player.  Every muscle in it was drawn, and from the tightened lips streamed such whispered curses as the girl never before had heard.  Next him stood the hermit, solid and still, but with a queer spreading pallor under his tan.  In front of them Sherwen was crouched, scowlingly alert.  The expression of Mr. Brewster and Carroll, neither of whom understood Spanish, betokened watchful puzzlement.