The place was almost dark now, and Appleby contrived to seize Harper’s shoulder and drag him back as the crowd poured in from the plaza. Once more somebody touched him, and a man overturned a larger table, which brought down three or four of those who made at them most fiercely, while in another moment or two he found himself, still clutching Harper, in a shadowy calle behind the café. He turned to thank the two men he saw beside him, but one ran up the street, and the other, slipping back into the café, slammed the door in his face. Harper stared at him, gasping. “Let go of me. I’m going back to kill two or three of them,” he said. Appleby thrust him forward into the street. “You are not while I can hold you,” he said. “It seems to me you have done quite enough!” Harper turned and glared at him, but Appleby still clutched his shoulder resolutely, and his face relaxed. “Well,” he said more calmly, “I guess I’ve hurt more than the feelings of one of them. What did that fellow shove us out for, anyway?” “I don’t know,” said Appleby. “Perhaps he was afraid of their wrecking the café, or he didn’t want us hurt. We seem to have more friends than we are aware of in Santa Marta. It is apparently convenient at times to be connected with the Sin Verguenza.” Harper, who shook off his anger, followed him down the street, but he stopped again when they crossed another one that led back to the plaza. They could see the wide opening, with the white walls that hemmed it in cutting against the soft indigo of the sky, and hear the confused murmurs that rose out of it. Then there was a crash of music that rang, as it were, exultantly across the shadowy town until a tumultuous roar of voices drowned the Royal March of Spain. Harper clenched one hand. “You hear them!” he said. “Well, they’ll get their answer by and by, and they’re not going to feel like shouting when we’re through with them.” Appleby said nothing. He understood the hot Castilian temperament, and the outburst of sentiment was comprehensible, but the news of the disaster had also sent a chill of horror and suspicion through him. Still, he laid his hand with a restraining grasp on Harper’s arm, and they went on silently to the “Four Nations,” where they had left the vehicle in which they had driven out from the hacienda.