ed down her cheeks, and she wrung her hands in
anguish evoking a ready and sympathetic response from her hearers. Then
she went on to recall to their memory the sad homecoming of two months
ago, and the dreadful tale that they had been told when they asked why
the Senorita had not also returned: and finally she reminded them--as
though any reminder were by this time necessary--that the author of the
family's woe now lay, ay, at that very moment, imprisoned in the tobacco
shed, within a stone's-throw of the spot where they were then assembled.
She spoke with qualified satisfaction of the punishment which the young
master had inflicted upon the picaro in their presence a few hours ago;
she admitted that, so far as it went, it was good: but she contended
that it did not go nearly far enough, considering the monstrous
character of the crime of which the prisoner had been guilty; and she
asserted her conviction that white men did not know how to punish, that
they were altogether too squeamish in their notions, particularly in the
matter of dealing mercifully with those who had injured them; and that
it was only the negro who thoroughly understood how to devise a
punishment to properly fit the crime.

It was enough; there was no need for her to say another word. With
consummate skill she had gradually wrought her audience up to a pitch of
demoniac fury; she had pictured her--and their--beloved young mistress
in the power of the wretch who crouched with smarting, lacerated back
yonder in the shed--insulted, ill-treated, and finally driven to madness
and death by him: and now, at a word from one of them, the whole body of
negroes sprang to their feet and, with low, hissing, muttering
execrations and threats, infinitely more terrifying to listen to than
the loudest yells of ferocity, ran to the shed and, with a few low-
murmured words of explanation to the guard, demanded the surrender of
the prisoner. The demand was conceded with scarcely a word of protest,
and five minutes later the miserable Alvaros, in a speechless frenzy of
fear, was being hurried along a lonely bush path, known only to the
negroes, to a spot some three miles distant. What happened to him when
he arrived there must be left untold; suffice it to say that Major
Alvaros was never more seen of men, and the mystery of his disappearance
remains unsolved to this day, although Carlos Montijo and Jack Singleton
are under the delusion that they know what became of