of his guns for the morning.

With this gun he departed into the woods. He was no sportsman; but this
did not matter, since the game he had in view was extremely docile, it
was so docile that it would even arrange itself in the best possible
position for the ball.

But the desperate young man--his manner was calm as he made his way
through the beautiful southern forest--was not permitted to end his
earthly existence then. A hand seized his shoulder. "Are you mad,
Adolfo?" said Manuel Ruiz, tears gleaming in his eyes as he almost threw
his friend to the ground in the quick, violent effort he made to get
possession of the gun. Then, seeing that Adolfo was looking at him very
strangely, "If you come another step nearer, I'll shoot you down!" he
shouted.

The Cuban did not say, "That is what I want;" he did not move or speak.

Manuel immediately began to talk. "They sent me down here, Adolfo; they
had heard, and they were afraid for you. I had just got home, and they
asked me to come--your aunt asked me."

"My aunt asked you," repeated Torres, mechanically.

"Yes, Adolfo, your aunt. You must care something for _her_," said
Manuel. He looked uneasily about him.

And then hurrying through the wood, came Madam Giron.

The loving-hearted, sweet-tempered woman was much moved. She took her
dead sister's unhappy boy in her arms, and wept over him as though he
had been her own child; she soothed him with motherly caresses; she
said, tenderly, that she had not been kind enough to him, that she had
been too much taken up with her own children; "But now--_now_, my
dearest--" This all in Spanish, the sweetest sound in the world to poor
Torres' ears.

A slight convulsion passed over his features, though no tears came. He
was young enough to have felt acutely the loneliness of his suffering,
the solitude of the death he was on his way to seek. He stood perfectly
still; his aunt was now leaning against him as she wept, he put one arm
protectingly round her; he felt a slow, slow return towards, not a less
torturing pain, but towards greater courage in bearing it, in this
sympathy which had come to him. Even Manuel had shown sympathy. "I
feel--I feel that I have been--rather cowardly," he said at last in a
dull tone.

"No, no, dear," said his aunt, putting up her soft hand to stroke his
dark hair. "It was very natural, we all understand."

And then a mist did show itself for an instant in the poor boy's eyes.

*