orship do as she has requested," said Andrew; "for so I
be married to her, I will go content to the other world, leaving this
one with the name of being hers."

"You must love her very much?"

"So much," replied the prisoner, "that whatever I could say of it would
be nothing to the truth. In a word, senor corregidor, let my business be
despatched. I killed the man who insulted me; I adore this young gitana;
I shall die content if I die in her grace, and God's I know will not be
wanting to us, for we have both observed honourably and strictly the
promise we made each other."

"This night then I will send for you," said the corregidor, "and you
shall marry Preciosa in my house, and to-morrow morning you shall be on
the gallows. In this way I shall have complied with the demands of
justice and with the desire of you both." Andrew thanked him; the
corregidor returned home, and told his wife what had passed between
them.

During his absence Preciosa had related to her mother the whole course
of her life; and how she had always believed she was a gipsy and the old
woman's grand-daughter; but that at the same time she had always
esteemed herself much more than might have been expected of a gitana.
Her mother bade her say truly, was she very fond of Don Juan? With great
bashfulness and with downcast eyes she replied that, having considered
herself a gipsy, and that she should better her condition by marrying a
knight of Santiago, and one of such station as Don Juan de Carcamo, and
having, moreover, learned by experience his good disposition and
honourable conduct, she had sometimes looked upon him with the eyes of
affection; but that as she had said once for all, she had no other will
than that which her parents might approve.

Night arrived; and about ten they took Andrew out of prison without
handcuffs and fetters, but not without a great chain with which his body
was bound from head to foot. In this way he arrived, unseen by any but
those who had charge of him, in the corregidor's house, was silently
and cautiously admitted into a room, and there left alone. A confessor
presently entered and bade him confess, as he was to die next day. "With
great pleasure I will confess," replied Andrew; "but why do they not
marry me first? And if I am to be married, truly it is a sad bridal
chamber that awaits me."

Dona Guiomar, who heard all this, told her husband that the terrors he
was inflicting on Don Juan were excessive, and