“You will go back to work until the usual hour,” he said. “If all goes well you will begin again to‐morrow, but this is a country in which no one knows what may happen.” The men took the money in grave wonder, and Appleby, who did not eat very much, sat down to breakfast, but both he and Harper felt it a relief when the plates were taken away. “You will keep them busy, if it is only to stop them talking,” he said. “I have wasted too much time already, and if I am to straighten up everything by this evening there is a good deal to do.” Harper went out, and Appleby, sitting down in his office, wrote up accounts until the afternoon. He dare leave no word for Harding, but that appeared unnecessary, for if Harding found San Cristoval in the possession of the Sin Verguenza he would, Appleby felt certain, understand and profit by the position. The room resembled an oven, and no more light than served to make writing possible entered the closed lattices; but with the perspiration dripping from him Appleby toiled on, and the last Spanish dollar had been accounted for when Harper and the man who carried the comida came up the stairway. Then it was with a little sigh he laid down his pen and tied the neatly engrossed documents together. The life he led at San Cristoval suited him, and now he was to turn his back on it and go back once more, a homeless and penniless adventurer, to the Sin Verguenza. Glancing up he saw Harper leaning on a bureau and looking at him. “That’s another leaf turned down,” he said. “A good deal may happen to both of us before to‐morrow.” Harper nodded gravely. “Oh yes,” he said. “That’s why I’m going to make a kind of special dinner. I don’t think I had much breakfast, and I don’t quite know when we may get another.” The dinner he had given the cook instructions concerning was rather more elaborate than usual, and flasks of red and amber wine stood among the dishes and the piled‐up fruit. Neither of them had much to say, but they ate, and when very little remained on the table Harper leaned back in his chair with a smile of content. “That’s one thing Morales can’t take away from me, and I guess it should carry me on quite a while,” he said. They lay still, cigar in hand, for the most part of an hour and then as the sunlight faded from the patio Harper appeared to grow restless. Appleby watched him with a little smile. “You don’t seem quite easy,” he said. Harper stared at him, and then broke into a somewhat hollow laugh. “It’s a fact,” he said. “I was kind of wondering if it wasn’t time Pancho or one of the other men came back. I guess one could see them on the tram‐ line from the roof. Morales will be here in an hour or two.”