ed;
she had silken furniture, embroidered curtains--and I togged out like
the thief I was!

"'_Minchorro_,' said Carmen, 'I've a good mind to smash up everything
here, set fire to the house, and take myself off to the mountains.' And
then she would fondle me, and then she would laugh, and she danced about
and tore up her fripperies. Never did monkey gambol nor make such faces,
nor play such wild tricks, as she did that day. When she had recovered
her gravity--

"'Hark!' she said, 'this is gipsy business. I mean him to take me to
Ronda, where I have a sister who is a nun' (here she shrieked with
laughter again). 'We shall pass by a particular spot which I shall make
known to you. Then you must fall upon him and strip him to the skin.
Your best plan would be to do for him, but,' she added, with a certain
fiendish smile of hers, which no one who saw it ever had any desire to
imitate, 'do you know what you had better do? Let _El Tuerto_ come up
in front of you. You keep a little behind. The crayfish is brave, and
skilful too, and he has good pistols. Do you understand?'

"And she broke off with another fit of laughter that made me shiver.

"'No,' said I, 'I hate Garcia, but he's my comrade. Some day, maybe,
I'll rid you of him, but we'll settle our account after the fashion of
my country. It's only chance that has made me a gipsy, and in certain
things I shall always be a thorough Navarrese,* as the proverb says.

* _Navarro fino_.

"'You're a fool,' she rejoined, 'a simpleton, a regular _payllo_. You're
just like the dwarf who thinks himself tall because he can spit a long
way.* You don't love me! Be off with you!'

* _Or esorjle de or marsichisle, sin chisnar lachinguel_.
"The promise of a dwarf is that he will spit a long way."--A
gipsy proverb.

"Whenever she said to me 'Be off with you," I couldn't go away. I
promised I would start back to my comrades and wait the arrival of the
Englishman. She, on her side, promised she would be ill until she left
Gibraltar for Ronda.

"I remained at Gibraltar two days longer. She had the boldness to
disguise herself and come and see me at the inn. I departed, I had a
plan of my own. I went back to our meeting-place with the information as
to the spot and the hour at which the Englishman and Carmen were to pass
by. I found _El Dancaire_ and Garcia waiting for me. We spent the night
in a wood, beside a fire made of pine-cones that blazed splendidly. I
su