There was another half-hour of the mutual exchange of compliments before O’Connor could get away. Alphonse and Gaston were fairly outdone, for the Arizonian, with a smile hidden deep behind the solemnity of his blue eyes, gave as good as he got. When he was at last fairly in the safety of his own rooms he gave way to limp laughter while describing to his little friend that most ceremonious parting. “He pressed me to his manly bay window, Curly, and allowed he was plumb tickled to death to have met me. Says I, coming back equal strong, ’twas the most glorious day of my life.” “Oh, I know _you_,” answered young Hardman, with a smile. “A friend of his friend O’Halloran—” “Mr. O’Halloran was here while you were away. He seemed very anxious to see you; said he would call again in an hour. I think it must be important.” Came at that instant O’Halloran’s ungentle knock, on the heels of which his red head came through the open door. “You’re the very lad I’m wanting to see, Bucky,” he announced, and followed this declaration by locking all the doors and beckoning him to the center of the room. “Is that tough neck of yours aching again, Reddy?” inquired his friend whimsically. “It is that, me bye. There’s the very divil to pay,” he whispered. “Cough it out, Mike.” “That tyrant Megales is onto our game. Somebody’s leaked, or else he has a spy in our councils—as we have in his, the ould scoundrel.” “I see. Your spy has told you that his spy has reported to him—” “That the guns are to be brought in to-night. He has sent out a guard to bring them in safely to _him_. If he gets them, our game is up, me son, and you can bet your last nickle on that.” “If he gets them! Is there a chance for us?” “Glory be! there is. You see, he doesn’t know that we know what he has done. For that reason he sent out only a guard of forty men. If he sent more we would suspect what he was doing, ye see. That is the way the old fox reasoned. But forty—they were able to slip out of the city on last night’s train in civilian’s clothes and their arms in a couple of coffins.” “Why didn’t he send a couple of hundred men openly, and at the same time arrest you all?” “That doesn’t suit his book at all. For one thing, he probably doesn’t know all of us, and he doesn’t want to bag half of us and throw the rest into immediate rebellion. It’s his play not to force the issue until after the election, Bucky. He controls all the election machinery and will have himself declared reëlected, the old scamp, notwithstanding that he’s the most unpopular man in the State. To precipitate trouble now would be just foolishness, he argues. So he’ll just capture our arms, and after the election give me and my friends quiet hell. Nothing public, you know—just unfortunate assassinations that he will regret exceedingly, me bye. But I have never yit been assassinated, and, on principle, I object to being trated so. It’s very destructive to a man’s future usefulness.”