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 Montiano had stated in his letter that Don Ruy had only recently arrived from Spain, it was fairly certain that Lance Falcon had never seen him; and all that was needed, therefore, was to simulate a type—the type of young Spanish gallant seeking profit and adventure in Spain's great New World. Swarthy as the swarthiest Spaniard, lean, lithe and straight as a sapling pine, Lachlan McDonald on this night might well have been Don Ruy Ortiz to any man to whom the latter was unknown.

There was one disagreeable possibility that might spoil everything at the start—the possibility that Falcon might recognize this false Ortiz as the man with whom he had wrestled in the Stanwicke garden. Determinedly Lachlan put this thought from him; and logic seemed, in a measure at least, to be on his side. He had leaped upon Falcon from behind. The latter had not see his assailant's face until after some minutes of desperate struggle, and by then that face was grimed and bloody. He had seen it, moreover, only in the half-light of dusk. He would hardly recognize it, Lachlan told himself, when he saw it again.

There was no time to lose. At 12 o'clock the real Ruy Ortiz would board Captain Falcon's brig at her anchorage in midstream off the old Cypress wharf; and before that hour arrived the false Ortiz must have concluded his business and bidden his host good-bye. Two hours, supposing that all went well, should allow ample margin; but all might not go well.

Lachlan walked swiftly, therefore, by the most