ad
received in his passage through the bushes, became of an ash-like
paleness. He cast a piteous look at Paco, who surveyed him with
unrelenting aspect.

"Not the first time I've had you at a rope's end," said he; "although
the knot wasn't always in the same place. Come, I've no time to lose!
Will you answer, or hang?"

"What do you want to know?"

"I have already asked you three times," returned Paco, impatiently, "who
this letter is for, and what about."

"For Zumalacarregui," replied Jaime; "and now you know as much as I do."

"Why have I been kept in prison?" demanded Paco.

"Why did you come with the lady?" replied the esquilador. "Had you
stopped at Segura, no one would have meddled with you."

"I came because I was ordered. Where is Dona Rita?"

The gipsy hesitated, and then answered surlily. "I do not know."

Paco gave the rope a twitch which brought the esquilador's tongue out of
his mouth.

"Liar!" he exclaimed; "I heard you speaking to her just now. What does
she here?"

"A prisoner," muttered the half-strangled gipsy.

"Whose?"

"Colonel Villabuena's."

"And the Senor Conde. Where is he?"

"Dead."

"Dead!" repeated Paco, letting the rope go, grasping the esquilador by
the collar, and furiously shaking him. "The noble count dead! When did
he die? Or is it a lie of your invention?"

"He was dead before I fetched the young lady from Segura," said Jaime.
"The story of his being wounded, and wishing to see her, was merely a
stratagem to bring her here."

Relinquishing his hold, Paco took a step backwards, in grief and great
astonishment. The answers he had forced from Jaime, and his own natural
quickness of apprehension, were sufficient to enlighten him as to the
main outline of what he had hitherto found a mystery. He at once
conjectured Don Baltasar's designs, and the motives of Dona Rita's
imprisonment and his own. That the count was really dead he could not
doubt; for otherwise Baltasar would hardly have ventured upon his
daughter's abduction. Aware that the count's duties and usual
occupations did not lead him into actual collision with the enemy, and
that they could scarcely, except by a casualty, endanger his life, it
occurred to Paco, as highly probable, that he had met his death by
unfair means, at the hands of Don Baltasar and the gipsy. The colonel he
suspected, and Jaime he knew, to be capable of any iniquity. Such were
some of the reflections that passed rapidly through his m