After a conference with Asensio he decided that they must prepare for flight, and late that afternoon they all set out to seek a safer refuge, Evangelina in tears at leaving her precious garden plot.  Their led horse, one of those Lorenzo had captured, carried a pitifully light burden—­only some tools, some pans and kettles, and a roll of charred bedclothes.  Johnnie O’Reilly had no difficulty in locating the Residence of Ignacio Alvarado, but to communicate with him was quite another matter, inasmuch as his every step was dogged by that persistent shadow from Neuvitas.  Leslie Branch had told him enough about conditions here in Puerto Principe to make him extremely cautious, and after their first talk he had once more concealed his revolver in a safe hiding-place, taking good care thereafter that nothing in his conduct should awaken suspicion.

Unfortunately his room was on the second floor of the hotel, and hence his goings and comings were always open to observation.  But he noted that a window at one end of the upper hall overlooked a sloping, tile-roofed shed, and that the garden wall behind the hotel premises was not provided with those barbarous spikes or broken bottles which decorate so many Cuban walls.  It promised him a means of egress when the time should come to use it.  In this hall, moreover, directly opposite his door there was an oil bracket-lamp which gave light to the passageway, and which was forever going out, a fact which the young man noted with satisfaction.

One evening, several days after his arrival, a sudden rain-storm drove O’Reilly indoors, and as he ascended to his room he saw that the lamp in the hallway flared and smoked at every gust of wind.  It was very dark outside; he reasoned that the streets would be deserted.  Hastily securing that book which Alvarado, the dentist, had given him, he took a position close inside his door.  When he heard the spy pass and enter the next chamber he stole out into the hall and breathed into the lamp-chimney.  A moment later he was safely through the window and was working his way down the shed roof, praying that his movements had not been seen and that the tiles were firm.  The rain was driving in sheets and he was wet to the skin when he dropped into the patio; nevertheless he was laughing to himself.  He nimbly scaled the wall, crossed an inclosure, climbed a second wall, and descended into a dark side street.  Taking advantage of the densest shadows and the numerous overhanging balconies, he set out at a brisk trot.

A light showed through the barred windows of the Alvarado home, indicating that the family was in.  After some fumbling O’Reilly laid hold of the latch; then, without knocking, he opened the front door and stepped in.

He found himself, as he had expected, in the parlor, a high-ceilinged, sparsely furnished room with a glazed floor of Spanish mosaics.  His sudden appearance threw the occupants into alarm:  a woman cried out sharply; a man whom O’Reilly identified as Ignacio Alvarado himself leaped to his feet and faced him, exclaiming: