"Now, my lad," he said. "I think you ought to tell me something about yourself, and what you were doing in the Citadel. You asked me to save you from Manuel, and I have done so. Perhaps I have been hasty. But, in honor bound, you must tell me what you know and what you heard." Through Stuart's veins, the blood was beginning to course full and free. The pellets which Cecil had given him--whatever they were--removed his fatigue as though it had been a cloak. They loosened the boy's tongue, also, and freely he told the Englishman all his affairs save for his cause in pursuing Manuel, which he regarded as a personal matter. He mentioned the only words he had overheard, while watching in the ruined Citadel and explained that the taunting of Leborge by Manuel, during the conference, had been only a ruse to provoke trouble, the Cuban hoping that the boy would shoot. "And what general impression did you get from the meeting?" Cecil queried. The boy hesitated, fearing to enrage his questioner. "Well," he blurted out, "if I must say it, I think that you're plotting a revolution in this country, putting Leborge up as president, letting Manuel run the country, driving the United States clean out of it, and giving you the chance to take all sorts of commercial concessions for yourself." The Englishman nodded his head. "For a guess," he declared, "your idea is not half bad. Evidently, you have plenty of imagination. The only trouble with your summing up of the situation, my boy, is that it is wrong in every particular. If you did not learn any more than that from the conference, your information is quite harmless. I suppose I can count on your never mentioning this meeting?" Stuart thought for a moment. "No," he said, "I can't promise that." The Englishman lifted his eyebrows slightly. "And why?" Stuart found it difficult to say why. He had a feeling that to swear silence would, in a sense, make him a party to the conspiracy, whatever it might be. "I--I've got it in for Manuel," he said lamely, though conscious, as he said it, that the reply would not satisfy. Cecil looked at him through narrowed eyelids. "I suppose you know that I would have no scruples in shooting you if you betrayed us," he remarked. Stuart looked up. "I don't know it," he answered. "Manuel or Leborge might do it, but I think you'd have a lot of scruples in shooting an unarmed boy." "Surely you can't expect me to save your life merely to run my own neck in a noose?" "That's as good as admitting that what you're doing might run your neck into a noose," commented Stuart shrewdly, if a little imprudently. "All right. But you must play fair. I have helped you. In honor, you can't turn that help against me."