Maseden swung on his heel; the matrimonial agent had vanished.

“The señor signified that he would return soon,” said the jailer.

“He’s gone for the clothes!” mused Maseden, his thoughts promptly reverting to the fantastic marriage project. “The sly old fox is devilish anxious to get me spliced before my number goes up. I wonder why? And where in the world will he raise a suitable rig? Hang it all, I wish I had a little longer to live. This business becomes more interesting every minute!”

Though he was sure the attempt would be hopeless, Maseden resolved to make one last effort. He looked the half-caste squarely in the face.

“Get me out of this before Señor Steinbaum comes back and I’ll give you twenty thousand dollars gold,” he said quietly.

The man met his glance without flinching.

“I could not help you, señor, if you paid me a million dollars,” he answered. “It is your life or mine—those are my orders. And it is useless to think of attacking me,” he added, because [Pg 11]for one moment black despair scowled menacingly from Maseden’s strong features. “There are ten men at each door of the corridor ready to shoot you at the least sign of any attempt to escape.”

[Pg 11]

“The preparations for the wedding are fairly complete, then?”

Maseden spoke Spanish fluently, and the half-caste grinned at the joke.

“It will soon be over, señor,” was all he could find to say.

The condemned man knew that the fellow was not to be bribed at the cost of his own life. He turned again and grew interested once more in the shaft of sunlight. How quickly it moved! He calculated that before it reached a certain crack in the masonry he would have passed into “yesterday’s seven thousand years.”

It was not a pleasing conceit. In self-defense, as it were, he bent his wits on to the proposed marriage. He was half inclined to regret the chivalrous impulse which spurred him to agree to it. Yet there was a spice of humor in the fact that a man who was regarded as an inveterate woman-hater by the dusky young ladies of San Juan should 

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