antilla
which I knew, and yet did not know, because I always saw it set
daintily upon her head. In a moment it had come home to me, and with
the knowledge a keen and sickening dread. Why had this man followed my
mother, and why did her mantilla lie thus upon the ground?

I turned and sped like a deer back to where I had seen the lace. All the
way the footprints went before me. Now I was there. Yes, the wrapping
was hers, and it had been rent as though by a rude hand; but where was
she?

With a beating heart once more I bent to read the writing of the
footsteps. Here they were mixed one with another, as though the two had
stood close together, moving now this way and now that in struggle. I
looked up the path, but there were none. Then I cast round about like
a beagle, first along the river side, then up the bank. Here they were
again, and made by feet that flew and feet that followed. Up the bank
they went fifty yards and more, now lost where the turf was sound, now
seen in sand or loam, till they led to the bole of a big oak, and were
once more mixed together, for here the pursuer had come up with the
pursued.

Despairingly as one who dreams, for now I guessed all and grew mad with
fear, I looked this way and that, till at length I found more footsteps,
those of the Spaniard. These were deep marked, as of a man who carried
some heavy burden. I followed them; first they went down the hill
towards the river, then turned aside to a spot where the brushwood was
thick. In the deepest of the clump the boughs, now bursting into leaf,
were bent downwards as though to hide something beneath. I wrenched them
aside, and there, gleaming whitely in the gathering twilight was the
dead face of my mother.

CHAPTER V

THOMAS SWEARS AN OATH

For a while I stood amazed with horror, staring down at the dead face of
my beloved mother. Then I stooped to lift her and saw that she had been
stabbed, and through the breast, stabbed with the sword which I carried
in my hand.

Now I understood. This was the work of that Spanish stranger whom I
had met as he hurried from the place of murder, who, because of the
wickedness of his heart or for some secret reason, had striven to slay
me also when he learned that I was my mother's son. And I had held this
devil in my power, and that I might meet my May, I had suffered him to
escape my vengeance, who, had I known the truth, would have dealt with
him as the priests of Anahuac deal with t