While the six Americans rode gloomily away from what they had done, and from their own thoughts as they best could, a stealthy company was forming under the trees among the tents of the Republican general. After a time the seeming spectres began to move in unison, an undulating wave that spread as the grayish shadow of a low hanging cloud. The dim figures slowly swept the little space of valley, on toward the steep slope of La Cruz, and soon they were climbing, silently creeping, nearer and nearer the dark walls above. Two seemed the leaders, and the third limped close behind. But one of the first two held a pistol ever near the heart of his companion, who was wrapped to the eyes in a Spanish cloak. "Who goes----" cried an Imperialist sentry. "Your colonel, fool!" he of the cloak stopped him short. "I, Miguel Lopez. I am changing the guard. Return now to your barracks and get what sleep you can before morning. One of these men with me will take your place." In like manner each later challenge was satisfied, and so on to a cannon-battered crevice in the wall. The spectres passed through the gap there into a field of graves on the mound's level summit. The earth had an uncanny softness under their tread. The plots were mostly fresh, of slain Imperialists still keeping their rank according to battalion. But the living, the Reserve Brigade, were here as well, sleeping over the dead. They stirred and grumbled at being disturbed, but thought then no more of the intruders. The secret plans for the daybreak attack explained everything. Their colonel, whose voice they knew, was shifting forces in preparation. But when the dawn came, they awoke to find their weapons gone, and themselves defenseless prisoners. Many of the spectral troop fell away to hold the cemetery, but the rest kept on, and entered the monastery garden. Here there was a battery of one gun, whose muzzle pointed the way to the Republican camp. Without a sound the Imperialist gunners were replaced by Republicans. The cannon was one captured during the Cimatario fight. It was called "La Tempestad," and bore an inscription, "The Last Argument of Nations." Its new possessors turned the muzzle squarely on the monastery, not fifty yards away, where Maximilian lay then asleep.