"Send for it! Send for it!" cried Santiago. "Send for it at once that I may turn over to my daughter the secret of the mine."
"That you will never be able to do," said Strong. "It has been destroyed."
"Destroyed!" burst from almost every lip. "Destroyed? How?"
Strong shook his head.
"I can't tell. Again you'll have to ask Ambrosio. It is he who destroyed it."
"By George!" exclaimed Billie, "I knew I ought to have killed that monk the first time I had any dealings with him. I'm sorry now that I didn't."
"At any rate," declared Don Esteban, "I shall send for the box."
He turned to Santiago, who had fallen back upon his pillow, and over whom the physician was bending and feeling his pulse.
"I shall send for it at once," he repeated.
Slowly the physician raised his head and loosed his hold upon the sick man's wrist.