“I wish I could find myself face to face with that scoundrel, man to man, for a few minutes!” retorted Mortimer. “Oh, for a company of the Guards at my back at this moment and I’d soon teach that fellow and those behind him here a lesson. Prisoners or dead he said they would be shortly. I’d show him that these same Guards were very much alive!” “Prisoners or dead, eh?” repeated Robert. “Did he tell you that?” “Yes,” answered Mortimer impatiently. “He spoke only the truth,” said Robert solemnly. Dean started. This was the second time within a few minutes he had heard this declaration and the man who now uttered it spoke earnestly and with conviction. In Mortimer the words created nothing save irritation and impatience. The idea of a body of bandits, or other ruffians, talking of annihilating the famous Guards--one of the crack regiments of the world. It was too preposterous! “Are you afflicted, too?” he asked with contempt. “But never mind that! What’s this body of men here? We are at least entitled to know to whom we are prisoners.” They had come to the end of the cañon and had reached the main valley. Robert led in sharp turn to the right and kept along parallel with the base of the mountain. “I may not answer your questions,” he replied, “but unless I am much mistaken, there will shortly arrive here one high in authority with whom you will talk. This air-ship of yours must be reported at once. It is the most momentous thing which could have happened.” “Why so? And who is this one high in authority of whom you speak?” asked Mortimer. Robert parried his question with the query: “Suppose you tell me where you got your air-ship? Did you secure it from one of our camps?” “That ruffian back there has already asked me that,” replied Mortimer, “and I told him that it wasn’t stolen, as he seemed to think, from any of your people, but was the legitimate property of His Majesty, the King.” “Then it was sold to the royalists by some renegade of our party,” exclaimed Robert excitedly. “Not at all,” replied Mortimer. “There you’re quite wrong.” “Who built it, then? Have you any more such ships?” continued Robert with the same avidity. “Steady, now!” replied Mortimer, smiling at the other’s eagerness. “You’re not particularly liberal in the matter of information and we’re not generous, either,” he added with sarcasm, “after the treatment we have experienced here.” “For that,” replied Robert humbly, “I ask your pardon in my behalf and in behalf of many others here who will learn and not approve of what has been done. The Colonel is a hard man--a brutal man, if you will--but a highly capable one. Hence he is in command here. Blood will have to be shed so that our cause may prevail, but the great mass of us are, I may truly say, opposed to any unnecessary violence.” “You speak strangely,” said Mortimer.