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 you this, but your obstinate blindness wrings it from my heart."

"Let the thieves fall out, then. Maybe the innocent will profit by it."

"Innocent!" he repeated, bitterly discounting the word. "You plot to sell your country for a price"

"Of liberty to all men," she said.

"Liberty! These sweat-sour peones would get drunk on liberty; they would cut all our throats in a week."

"They would pay as they have been paid. It is the nature of man."

"And if you do not sign, Miss," Don Abrahan struck the table with the folded deed to solemnize his words, "by the sacred blood, you will be shot, as Toberman was shot!"

"I'll never sign it, Don Abrahan."

"Consider it in the night, when the terror of death comes to a man in its blackest form," he counseled. "I will give you until morning. Beyond that I cannot protect you; the matter will have passed out of my hands. Verdugo is threatening. He is a wolf; there is no mercy in his breast. He has smelled your gold, and it is like blood to a lion."

"You are all base, all cowards," she said, rising with her denunciation. "Don Abrahan Garvanza, when the United States soldiers step ashore from their ships you will meet men, such men as you heard this morning denounce you, challenge and