"I must go," replied Paul, "although I thank you for the courtesy." "But we cannot part with you now," said the Spaniard, "you are on Spanish soil. Others of your kind may be near, also, and you and they have come, uninvited. I would know more about it." "You mean that you will detain me?" said Paul in surprise. The Spaniard delicately stroked his pointed beard. "Perhaps that is the word," he replied. "As I said, you have trespassed upon our domain, and I must hold you, for a time, at least. I know not what plot is afoot" "As a prisoner?" "If you wish to call it so." "And yet there is no war between your country and mine!" The Spaniard delicately stroked his pointed beard again. Paul looked at him accusingly, and Francisco Alvarez unable to sustain his straight gaze, turned his eyes aside. But Braxton Wyatt's face was full of triumph, although he kept silent. Paul thought rapidly. It seemed to him a traitorous design and he did not doubt that Wyatt had instigated it, but he must submit at present. He was powerless inside a ring of fifty soldiers. Without a word, he sat down again on the little grassy knoll and it pleased Alvarez to affect a great politeness, and to play with his prisoner as a cat with a mouse. He insisted that he eat and he made his men bring him the tenderest of food, deer meat and wild turkey, and fish, freshly caught. Finally he opened a flask and poured wine in a small silver cup. "It is the wine of Xeres, Senor Cotter," he said, "and you can judge how precious it is, as it must be a full five thousand miles from its birthplace." He handed the little cup in grandiose manner to Paul, and Paul, meeting his humor, accepted it in like fashion. He had not tasted wine often in his life and he found it a strong fluid, but, in this crisis, it strengthened him and put a new sparkle in his blood. "Thanks," he said as he politely returned the empty cup, and resumed his seat on the knoll. Then Alvarez walked aside, and talked again in whispers with the renegade. Wyatt urged that Paul be held indefinitely. He would not talk at first, but they must get from him the fullest details about the settlements in Kentucky, the weak points, where to attack and when. If the settlements were left alone they would certainly spread all over Kentucky and in time across the Mississippi into the Spanish domain. Spain was far away, and she could not drive them back. But the Spaniards could urge on the tribes again, and with a hidden hand, send them arms and ammunition. White men with cannon could even join the warriors, and Spain might convincingly say that she knew nothing of if. The words of the renegade pleased Francisco Alvarez. Deep down in his crafty heart he loved intrigue and cunning. "Yes, we'll hold him," he said. "He is a trespasser here, although I will admit that he is not the kind of person that I expected to find in the heart of this vast wilderness."