rifles to a point in that province. I have them boxed, ready for shipment as new machinery for a sugar plantation. They are at Wilmington. I thought I had placed them on a steamer in the Delaware last week, but your confounded Secret Service agents are too vigilant, and they learned from members of the crew that something unusual was up. If you will take those boxes on the Cristobal I can get them here on Friday and will arrange for an insurgent schooner to meet you at any point you name. Will you do it?"

"It's risky business," slowly said the Captain, lighting a fresh Vuelta cigar.

"It means liberty to us. Dios, Senor Captain, where would your country be if the French had not helped Washington and his ragged rebels?"[Pg 39]

[Pg 39]

Franklin puffed away slowly. The Cuban watched him. At last the Captain made a decision.

"You may send those rifles along," he said.

The two men grasped hands again. They were in that position when Catherine put her head in the library door. "You're as quiet as two conspirators," she laughingly said. "Perhaps we are conspiring, Senorita," called General Moreto as the girl shut herself from view again.

"That is a charming daughter of yours, Captain," said the Cuban, in his best English.

"Ah! but your girl has the head and the wit. You find her a great help, don't you?"

Moreto's smile was more frank than his reply. "Women take a bigger share in revolutions than is generally believed." he said.

In another half hour the details of their filibuster were arranged. A point in the Caribbean, near the Isle of Pines, was selected for a rendezvous. There the Cuban schooner would take aboard the contraband cargo and Franklin go on his way after bananas.

"Do you wish your family to know?" asked Moreto as they were about to leave the library. "My daughter knows all my business."

"Catherine is all right," replied Captain Franklin, "and so is Will, but his mother would worry too much."

And so for the next three days there was a great secret in the Franklin[Pg 40] home, shared by the young people with the two gray-haired men. They made trips to the steamer, at the foot of Centre-Market space, a slender, white-painted craft, 

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