"Quite so, quite so," exclaimed the Prior vaguely, but rather impatiently I thought. "But there is much to be done before we can say that anything wonderful will happen in regard to these discoveries. Now, Mr Glynn," he said, turning to me as though he were anxious to bring an awkward development of the conversation to an end, "shall I show you your rooms?" But I threw my shoulders back and stood my ground. I was not, I felt, a pawn on their chessboard, to be pushed forward as a mere gambit to cover other and more subtle forms of attack. "Excuse me, Prior," I said firmly, "but have we not met before?" The figure in front of me shook either with merriment or with annoyance, whilst Jose himself averted his face lest there I should discover too much. "Yes," he said, after a pause, in painfully noncommittal tones; "we have." "Where?" I queried. "Can't you recollect?" "No; I can't." "Think." "I have--I cannot." The man took a step forward and threw back his hood. He was no other than the man whom Casteno had sent me that night to consult in the House of Commons--John Cooper-Nassington. I started back amazed. "You, Mr Cooper-Nassington!" I cried. "You here, in this office, and in this house! What on earth, then, can this Order of St Bruno be?" An awkward pause followed. We both stood and stared at each other, and neither of us spoke. "Well, at all events," said the Honourable Member, at length summoning up a faint smile to his lips, "you can see now for yourself that in this matter of the manuscripts England is quite safe. I shall do nothing--I shall tolerate nothing--that will hurt our mother country or her interests. On the contrary, all of us here are fighting for her, and will do so until our last breath. We may not have particular faith in unscrupulous office-seekers and popularity-mongers of the type of Lord Cyril Cuthbertson or that precious but exceedingly foolish ally of his, the Earl of Fotheringay, but we have faith in the righteousness of Britain's claims and her needs. Hence we are going to see that, as this Lake of Sacred Treasure in Tangikano really belongs to her, it is not snapped from her by Spain, by the Jesuits, or by a lot of needy foreign adventurers who have begged, borrowed, and stolen all manner of concessions from the Mexican Republic, and who even to-day may have got wind of the existence of these documents and may be moving heaven and earth, and the diabolical powers under the earth, to get hold of them!"