Driscoll had shared nothing of the late emotions. He had smoked impassively. His interest was of the coldest. Only his eyes, narrowed fixedly on the Mexican, betrayed the heed he gave. When the others were gone, he uncrossed his legs, and crossed them the other way, and thrust the corncob into his pocket. "Sit down!" Murguia dropped to the nearest camp stool. "Now then, you with your dirty little affairs, why do you come to me?" Murguia leaned forward over the table between them, his bony arms among candles and a litter of earthen plates. The odor of meat assailed his nostrils. But the hunger in his leer had no scent for food. "This _is_ the time I meant, senor, when Rodrigo told you that you would see me." "About the ivory cross? But I gave you that a month ago." "A month ago--a month, wasted! How much sooner I would have come, only another had to be--persuaded--first." "Oh, had he? Then it's not about the cross? And this other? Suppose I guess? He was--he was the red-haired puppy, my old friend the Dragoon, who carried you off wounded that day? Humph, the very first guess, too!" Murguia darted at him a look of uneasy admiration. "I would have told Your Mercy, anyway," he said, half cringing. "Yes, he is Colonel Lopez." "And you 'persuaded' him?" "Events did. Since the siege began I've tried, I've worked, to convince him that these same events would happen. Ugh, the dull fool, he had to wait for them." "I can almost guess again," said Driscoll, as though it were some curious game, "but if you'd just as soon explain----" "Listen! You remember two years ago at my hacienda, when Lopez sentenced you to death? But why did he sentence you to death, why, senor?" "That's an easy one. It was because he didn't want my offer of Confederate aid to reach Maximilian." "But why not? I will tell you. It was because he was trying even then to buy the Republic's good will, in case--in case anything should happen. But he was _afraid_ to change, the coward! He must first _know_ which side would win. I am his orderly--_he_ knows why I am--and I've tried to drive it into his thick wits that the Empire is damned and has been, but he still doubted, even when we were starving again, even when every crumb was gathered into the common store, even when it was useless to shoot men for not declaring hidden corn, even when forced loans were vain, since money could no longer buy. No senor, even with proofs like these, Miguel Lopez was stubborn." "I'd prob'bly guess he was a loyal scoundrel, after all." "More yet, he has fought bravely, making himself a marked man in the Republic's eyes." "Then why----"