"Now, tell me, Miss, what's wrong?" the bearded one invited. "Has this fellow some hold on you? Is he forcing you into this marriage?" Again the girl nodded dumbly. "She lies," said McTurpin, venomously, but the words were scarcely out of his mouth before the stranger's fist drove them back. McTurpin staggered. "Damn you!" he shouted, "I teach you to meddle between a man and his woman." Inez saw something gleam in his hand as the two men sprang upon each other. She heard another blow, a groan. Screaming, she fled uphill toward the custom house. CHAPTER X HULL "CAPITULATES" Like a startled deer, Inez Windham fled from McTurpin and the stranger, her little, high-heeled slippers sinking unheeded into the horse-trodden mire of Portsmouth Square, her silk skirt spattered and soiled; her hair, freed from the protecting mantilla, blowing in the searching trade wind. Thus, as Commander Hull sat upon the custom house veranda, reading the latest dispatch from Captain Ward, she burst upon him--a flushed, disheveled, lovely vision with fear-stricken eyes. "Senor," she panted, "Senor Commandante ... I must speak with you at once!" Hull rose. "My dear young lady"--he regarded her with patent consternation--"my dear young lady ... w-what is wrong?" She was painfully aware of her bedraggled state, the whirlwind lack of ceremony with which she had propelled herself into his presence. Suddenly words failed her, she was conscious that an arm stretched toward her as she swayed. Next she lay upon a couch in an inner chamber, the commander, in his blue-and-gold-braid stiffness bending over her, gravely anxious. She rose at once, ignoring his protesting gesture. "I--I fainted?" she asked perplexedly. Hull nodded. "Something excited you. A fight in the street below. A man was stabbed--" "Oh!" The white face of the bearded stranger sprang into her memory, "Is he dead?" "No, but badly hurt, I fancy," said the Commander. "They have taken him to the City Hotel." Desperately, she forced herself to speak. "I have come, senor, to ask a pardon for my brother. He is very dear to me--and to my mother"--she clasped her hands and held them toward him supplicatingly. "Senor, if Benito should be captured--you will have mercy?" The commander regarded her with puzzled interest. "Who is Benito, little one?" "His name is Windham. My father was a gring--Americano, Commandante." Hull frowned. "An American ... fighting against his country?" he said sharply. "Ah, sir"--the girl came closer in her earnestness--"he does not fight against the United States ... only against robbers who would hide behind its flag." In her tone there was the outraged indignation of a suffering people. "Horse thieves, cattle robbers." "Hush," said Hull, "you must not speak thus of American officials. Their seizures, I am told, were unavoidable--for military needs alone."