I!--Fly a second time! Escape again?"

And with crossed arms, and head erect, Joam Dacosta stepped forward.

"Never!" he said, in a voice so firm that Benito and Manoel stood
bewildered.

The young men had never thought of a difficulty like this. They had
never reckoned on the hindrances to escape coming from the prisoner
himself.

Benito advanced to his father, and looking him straight in the face, and
taking both his hands in his, not to force him, but to try and convince
him, said:

"Never, did you say, father?"

"Never!"

"Father," said Manoel--"for I also have the right to call you
father--listen to us! If we tell you that you ought to fly without
losing an instant, it is because if you remain you will be guilty toward
others, toward yourself!"

"To remain," continued Benito, "is to remain to die! The order for
execution may come at any moment! If you imagine that the justice of
men will nullify a wrong decision, if you think it will rehabilitate you
whom it condemned twenty years since, you are mistaken! There is hope no
longer! You must escape! Come!"

By an irresistible impulse Benito seized his father and drew him toward
the window.

Joam Dacosta struggled from his son's grasp and recoiled a second time.

"To fly," he answered, in the tone of a man whose resolution was
unalterable, "is to dishonor myself, and you with me! It would be a
confession of my guilt! Of my own free will I surrendered myself to
my country's judges, and I will await their decision, whatever that
decision may be!"

"But the presumptions on which you trusted are insufficient," replied
Manoel, "and the material proof of your innocence is still wanting! If
we tell you that you ought to fly, it is because Judge Jarriquez himself
told us so. You have now only this one chance left to escape from
death!"

"I will die, then," said Joam, in a calm voice. "I will die protesting
against the decision which condemned me! The first time, a few hours
before the execution--I fled! Yes! I was then young. I had all my life
before me in which to struggle against man's injustice! But to save
myself now, to begin again the miserable existence of a felon hiding
under a false name, whose every effort is required to avoid the pursuit
of the police, again to live the life of anxiety which I have led for
twenty-three years, and oblige you to share it with me; to wait each
day for a denunciation which sooner or later must come, to wait for the
cl