here was a fight, and we
didn't see it!"

"The alferez broke the doctor's teeth!" added Dona Victorina.

Captain Tiago entered, but he wasn't given time to get his breath. In
few words, with an intermingling of spicy language, Dona Victorina
narrated what had passed, naturally trying to put herself in a
good light.

"Linares is going to challenge him, do you hear? Or don't let him
marry your daughter. If he isn't courageous, he doesn't merit Clarita."

"What! you are going to marry this gentleman?" Sinang asked Maria,
her laughing eyes filling with tears. "I know you are discreet,
but I didn't think you inconstant."

Maria Clara, white as alabaster, looked with great, frightened eyes
from her father to Dona Victorina, from Dona Victorina to Linares. The
young man reddened; Captain Tiago dropped his head.

"Help me to my room," Maria said to her friends, and steadied by
their round arms, her head on the shoulder of Victorina, she went out.

That night the husband and wife packed their trunks, and presented
their account--no trifle--to Captain Tiago. The next morning they
set out for Manila, leaving to the pacific Linares the role of avenger.

XXXIX.

THE OUTLAWED.

By the feeble moonlight that penetrates the thick foliage of forest
trees, a man was making his way through the woods. His movement was
slow but assured. From time to time, as if to get his bearings, he
whistled an air, to which another whistler in the distance replied
by repeating it.

At last, after struggling long against the many obstacles a virgin
forest opposes to the march of man, and most obstinately at night,
he arrived at a little clearing, bathed in the light of the moon in
its first quarter. Scarcely had he entered it when another man came
carefully out from behind a great rock, a revolver in his hand.

"Who are you?" he demanded with authority in Tagalo.

"Is old Pablo with you?" asked the newcomer tranquilly; "if so,
tell him Elias is searching for him."

"You are Elias?" said the other, with a certain respect, yet keeping
his revolver cocked. "Follow me!"

They penetrated a cavern, the guide warning the helmsman when to
lower his head, when to crawl on all fours. After a short passage
they arrived at a sort of room, dimly lighted by pitch torches, where
twelve or fifteen men, dirty, ragged, and sinister, were talking
low among themselves. His elbows resting on a stone, an old man of
sombre face sat apart, looking to