“Mr. Aiken,” he said. “Only four people knew that those guns were ordered--Quay, who went to fetch them, General Laguerre, myself, and you. Some one of us must have sold out the others; no one else could have done it. It was not Quay. The General and I have been here in the mountains--we did not do it; and that--that leaves you.” “It does not leave me,” Aiken cried. He shouted it out with such spirit that I wondered at him. It was the same sort of spirit which makes a rat fight because he can’t get away, but I didn’t think so then. “It was Quay sold you out!” Aiken cried. “Quay told the Isthmian people as soon as the guns reached New Orleans. I suspected him when he cabled me he wasn’t coming back. I know him. I know just what he is. He’s been on both sides before.” “Silence, you--you,” Reeder interrupted. He was white with anger. “Mr. Quay is my friend,” he cried. “I trust him. I trust him as I would trust my own brother. How dare you accuse him!” He ceased and stood gasping with indignation, but his show of anger encouraged Captain Heinze to make a fresh attack on Aiken. “Quay took you off the beach,” he shouted. “He gave you food and clothes, and a bed to lie on. It’s like you, to bite the hand that fed you. When have you ever stuck to any side or anybody if you could get a dollar more by selling him out?” The whole thing had become intolerable. It was abject and degrading, like a falling-out among thieves. They reminded me of a group of drunken women I had once seen, shameless and foul-mouthed, fighting in the street, with grinning night-birds urging them on. I felt in some way horribly responsible, as though they had dragged me into it--as though the flying handfuls of mud had splattered me. And yet the thing which inflamed me the most against them was their unfairness to Aiken. They would not let him speak, and they would not see that they were so many, and that he was alone. I did not then know that he was telling the truth. Indeed, I thought otherwise. I did not then know that on those occasions when he appeared to the worst advantage, he generally was trying to tell the truth. Captain Heinze pushed nearer, and shoved his fist close to Aiken’s face. “We know what you are,” he jeered. “We know you’re no more on our side than you’re the American Consul. You lied to us about that, and you’ve lied to us about everything else. And now we’ve caught you, and we’ll make you pay for it.” One of the men in the rear of the crowd shouted, “Ah, shoot the beggar!” and others began to push forward and to jeer. Aiken heard them and turned quite white. “You’ve caught me?” Aiken stammered. “Why, I came here of my own will. Is it likely I’d have done that if I had sold you out?”