His Unknown Wife

ry little farther to the left was the enclosed patio, or courtyard, in which he would be shot within thirty minutes!

"I'm dashed if I feel a bit like dying," he said, as he strode by Steinbaum's side along the outer corridor. "If the time was about fourteen hours later I might imagine I was going to a fancy dress ball, though I wouldn't be able to dance much in these confounded boots."

The stout financier made no reply. He was singularly ill at ease. Any critical onlooker, not cognizant of the facts, would take him and not Maseden to be the man condemned to death.

A heavy, iron-clamped door leading to the row of cells was wide open. Some soldiers, lined up close to it in the hall, were craning their necks to catch a first glimpse of the Americano who was about to marry and die in the same breath, so to speak.

Beyond, near a table in the center of the spacious chamber, stood a group that arrested the eye--a Spanish priest, in vestments of semi-state; an olive-skinned man wh