be given up. Then they began to fire guns in
the lock! It seemed a long, long time she held to me there and begged
me to save her, but it could not have been.... The lock gave way, and
only the bolt held. I clasped her close to me and whispered telling
her to pray, but I never took my eyes off the door. When I saw it
shaking, I made the sign of the cross over her, and the knife I had
carried for myself found her heart quickly! That is how I took on me
the shadow of murder, and that is why the priest threatens me with the
fires of hell if I do not repent--and I am not repenting, Ramon."

"By God, no!" he muttered, staring into her defiant eyes. "That was a
fine thing, and your mother gave good blood to her children, Jocasta.
And then----?"

"I laid her on the bed among her bridal laces, all white--white! Over
her breast I folded her still hands, and set a candle at her head,
though I dared not pray! The door was giving way.

"I pushed back the bolt, also I spoke, but it did not seem me! That is
strange, but of a truth I did not know the voice I heard say: 'Enter,
her body is yours--and she no longer flees from you.'

"'Ha! That is good sense at last!' said Jose, and Conrad laughed and
praised himself as a lover.

"'I told you so!' he grunted. 'The little dear one knows that a nice
white German is not so bad!'

"And again I heard the voice strange to me say, 'She knows nothing,
Jose--and she knows all!'

"Jose stumbled in smiling, but Conrad, though drunk, stopped at the
door when he saw my hand with the knife. I thought my skirt covered it
as I waited for him--for the child had told me enough--I--I failed,
Ramon! His oath was a curious choked scream as I tried to reach him.
I do not know if it was the knife, or the dead girl on the bed made
him scream like that, but I knew then the German was at heart a
coward.

"Jose was too strong for me, and the knife could not do its work. I
was struck, and my head muffled in a _serape_. After that I knew
nothing.

"Days and nights went by in a locked room. I never got out of it until
I was chained hand and foot and sent north in a peon's ox-cart. Men
guarded me until Marto with other men waited for me on the trail. Jose
Perez could have had me killed, yes. Or he could have had me before
the judges for murder, but silence was the thing he most wanted--for
there is Dona Dolores Terain yet to be won. He has sent me north that
the General Terain, her father, will think me ou