“All at once I sprang up in a hurry. I’d forgotten all about O’Connor. I asked Izzy to fix up a lot of truck for him to eat.

“ ‘That big, oogly man,’ said Izzy. ‘But all right—he your friend.’

“I pulled a rose out of a bunch in a jar, and took the grub-basket around to the jail. O’Connor ate like a wolf. Then he wiped his face with a banana peel and said: ‘Have you heard nothing from Dona Isabel yet?’

“ ‘Hist!’ says I, slipping the rose between the bars. ‘She sends you this. She bids you take courage. At nightfall two masked men brought it to the ruined chateau in the orange grove. How did you like that goat hash, Barney?’

“O’Connor pressed the rose to his lips.

“ ‘This is more to me than all the food in the world,‘ says he. ‘But the supper was fine. Where did you raise it?’

“ ‘I’ve negotiated a stand-off at a delicatessen hut down-town,’ I tells him. ‘Rest easy. If there’s anything to be done I’ll do it.’

“So things went along that way for some weeks. Izzy was a great cook; and if she had had a little more poise of character and smoked a little better brand of tobacco we might have drifted into some sense of responsibility for the honour I had conferred on her. But as time went on I began to hunger for the sight of a real lady standing before me in a street-car. All I was staying in that land of bilk and money for was because I couldn’t get away, and I thought it no more than decent to stay and see O’Connor shot.

“One day our old interpreter drops around and after smoking an hour says that the judge of the peace sent him to request me to call on him. I went to his office in a lemon grove on a hill at the edge of the town; and there I had a surprise. I expected to see one of the usual cinnamon-coloured natives in congress gaiters and one of Pizzaro’s cast-off hats. What I saw was an elegant gentleman of a slightly claybank complexion sitting in an upholstered leather chair, sipping a high-ball and reading Mrs. Humphry Ward. I had smuggled into my brain a few words of Spanish by the help of Izzy, and I began to remark in a rich Andalusian brogue:

“ ‘Buenas dias, señor. Yo tengo—yo tengo—’

“ ‘Oh, sit down, Mr. Bowers,’ says he. ‘I spent eight years in your country in colleges and law schools. Let me mix you a high-ball. Lemon peel, or not?’

“Thus we got along. In about half an hour I was beginning to tell him about the scandal in our family when Aunt Elvira ran away with a Cumberland Presbyterian preacher. Then he says to me:

“ ‘I sent for you, Mr. Bowers, to let you know that you can have your friend Mr. O’Connor now. Of course we had to make a show of punishing him on account of his attack on General Tumbalo. It is arranged that he shall be released to-morrow night. You and he will be conveyed on board the fruit steamer Voyager, bound for New York, which lies in the harbour. Your passage will be arranged for.’

“ ‘One moment, judge,’ says I; ‘that revolution—’

“The judge lays back in his chair and howls.

“ ‘Why,’ says he presently, ‘that was all a little joke fixed up by the boys around the court-room, and one or two of our cup-ups, and a few clerks in the stores. The town is bursting its sides with laughing. The boys made themselves up to be conspirators, and they—what you call it?—stick Señor O’Connor for his money. It is very funny.’