surrounded by a glittering escort. The
officers of his staff were very peacocks in their gaudy adornment, and
as a rale, the best-looking of them were his first favourites.
Santander, on returning to Mexico, was appointed one of his
aides-de-camp, and being just the sort--a showy fellow--soon rose to
rank; so that the defeated candidate for a captaincy of Texan
Volunteers, was now a colonel in the Mexican Army, on the personal staff
of its Commander-in-Chief.

Had Florence Kearney and Cris Rock but known they were to meet this man
in Mexico--could they have anticipated seeing him, as he was now, at the
door of their prison-cell--their hearts would have been fainter as they
toiled along the weary way, and perchance in that lottery of life and
death they might have little cared whether they drew black or white.

At the sight of him there rose up all at once in their recollection that
scene upon the Shell Road; the Texan vividly recalling how he had ducked
the caitiff in the ditch, as how he looked after crawling out upon the
bank--mud bedraggled and covered with the viscous scum,--in strange
contrast to his splendid appearance now! And Kearney well remembered
the same, noting in addition a scar on Santander's cheek--he had himself
given--which the latter vainly sought to conceal beneath whiskers since
permitted to grow their full length and breadth.

These remembrances were enough to make the heart of the captive Irishman
beat quick, if it did not quail; while that of the Texan had like reason
to throb apprehensively.

Nor could they draw any comfort from the expression on Santander's face.
Instead, they but read there what they might well believe to be their
death sentence. The man was smiling, but it was the smile of Lucifer in
triumph--mocking, malignant, seeming to say, without spoken word but,
for all that, emphatically and with determination--

"I have you in my power, and verily you shall feel my vengeance."

They could tell it was no accident had brought him thither no duty of
prison inspection--but the fiendish purpose to flaunt his grandeur
before their eyes, and gloat over the misery he knew it would cause
them. And his presence explained what had hitherto been a puzzle to
them--why they two were being made an exception among their captive
comrades, and thrown into such strange fellowship. It must have been to
humiliate them; as, indeed, they could now tell by a certain speech
which the gaol-governor