ind during the
few moments that he stood beside Jaime, mute and motionless, meditating
on what had passed, and on what he should now do. Naturally prompt and
decided, and accustomed to perilous emergencies, he was not long in
making up his mind. Suddenly starting from his immobility, he seized the
end of the halter, and, to the horror of the gipsy, whose eyes were
fixed upon him, began pulling furiously at it, hand over hand, like a
sailor tugging at a hawser.

"_Misericordia!_" screamed the horror-stricken esquilador, as he found
himself lifted from the ground by the neck. "Mercy! mercy!"

But mercy there was none for him. His cries were stifled by the pressure
of the rope, and then he made a desperate effort to gain his feet. In
this he succeeded, and stood upright causing the noose for a moment to
slacken. He profited by the temporary relief to attempt another
ineffectual prayer for pity. A gasping, inarticulate noise in his throat
was the sole result; for the muleteer continued his vigorous pulls at
the cord, and in an instant the unhappy gipsy felt himself lifted
completely off the ground. He made one more violent strain to touch the
earth with the point of his foot; but no--all was in vain--higher and
higher he went, till the crown of his head struck against the long iron
hook through the loop of which the halter ran. When this was the case,
Paco caught his end of the rope round another hook at a less height from
the ground, twisted and knotted it securely; then stooping, he picked up
the esquilador's knife, re-entered the dungeon, and ascended the pile of
casks erected below the window. On the top of these he sat himself down
for a moment and listened. There proceeded from the wine-cellar a sort
of noise, as of a scraping and thumping against the wall. It was the
wretched gipsy kicking and struggling in his last agony.

"He dies hard," muttered Paco, a slight expression of compunction coming
over his features, "and I strung him up without priest or prayer. But,
what then! those gitanos are worse than Jews, they believe neither in
God nor devil. As for his death, he deserves it, the dog, ten times
over. And if he didn't, Dona Rita's fate depends on my escape, and I
could not leave him there to alarm the convent and have me pursued."

His scruples quieted by these arguments, the muleteer again listened.
All was silent in the vault. Paco cautiously put his head out at the
hole through which he had dragged the gip