ed."

"Garroted! What for?"

"Treason. There was discovered a compromising correspondence between him
and Bolivar. But why ask me? As a friend of Senor Ulloa, you surely know
all this?"

"I never was a friend of his--never even saw him! I had merely a letter to
him from a common friend. But how happened it that Senor Ulloa, who, I
believe, was a _correjidor_, entered into a correspondence with the
arch-traitor?"

"That made it all the worse. He richly deserved his fate. His eldest son,
who was privy to the affair, was strangled at the same time as his father;
his other children fled, and Senora Ulloa died of grief."

"Poor woman! No wonder the house is deserted. What a frightful state of
things!"

And then, feeling that I had said enough, and fearing that I might say
more, I turned on my heel, lighted a cigar, and, while I paced to and fro
in the _patio_, seriously considered my position, which, as I clearly
perceived, was beginning to be rather precarious.

As likely as not the innkeeper would denounce me, and then it would, of
course, be very absurd, for I was utterly ignorant, and Zamorra, a
Royalist to the bone, must have been equally ignorant that his friend
Ulloa had any hand in the rebellion. The mere fact of carrying a harmless
letter of introduction from a well-known loyalist to a friend whom he
believed to be still a loyalist, could surely not be construed as an
offense. At any rate it ought not to be. But when I recalled all I had
heard from Morena, and the stories told me but an hour before by Carera, I
thought it extremely probable that it would be, and bitterly regretted
that I had not mentioned to the latter Ulloa's name. He would have put me
on my guard, and I should not have so fatally committed myself with the
_posadero_.

But regrets are useless and worse. They waste time and weaken resolve. The
question of the moment was, What should I do? How avoid the danger which I
felt sure was impending? There seemed only one way--immediate flight. I
would go to Carera, tell him all that had happened, and ask him to arrange
for my departure from Caracas that very night. I could steal away unseen
when all was quiet.

"At once," I said to myself--"at once. If I exaggerate, if the danger be
not so pressing as I fear, he is just the man to tell me; but, first of
all, I will go into my room and destroy this confounded letter. The
_posadero_ did not see it. All that he can say is--"

"In the king's name!"