tumbled into the porch and struck at the door with his fist. There
was not a gleam of light. Gaspar Ruiz might have thought that the
inhabitants had fled from it, as from many others in the neighbourhood,
had it not been for the shouts of abuse that answered his thumping. In
his feverish and enfeebled state the angry screaming seemed to him part
of a hallucination belonging to the weird, dreamlike feeling of his
unexpected condemnation to death, of the thirst suffered, of the volleys
fired at him within fifteen paces, of his head being cut off at a blow.
"Open the door!" he cried. "Open in the name of God!"

An infuriated voice from within jeered at him: "Come in, come in. This
house belongs to you. All this land belongs to you. Come and take it."

"For the love of God," Gaspar Ruiz murmured.

"Does not all the land belong to you patriots?" the voice on the other
side of the door screamed on. "Are you not a patriot?"

Gaspar Ruiz did not know. "I am a wounded man," he said, apathetically.

All became still inside. Gaspar Ruiz lost the hope of being admitted,
and lay down under the porch just outside the door. He was utterly
careless of what was going to happen to him. All his consciousness
seemed to be concentrated in his neck, where he felt a severe pain. His
indifference as to his fate was genuine. The day was breaking when he
awoke from a feverish doze; the door at which he had knocked in the dark
stood wide open now, and a girl, steadying herself with her outspread
arms, leaned over the threshold. Lying on his back, he stared up at her.
Her face was pale and her eyes were very dark; her hair hung down black
as ebony against her white cheeks; her lips were full and red. Beyond
her he saw another head with long grey hair, and a thin old face with a
pair of anxiously clasped hands under the chin.

VI

"I knew those people by sight," General Santierra would tell his guests
at the dining-table. "I mean the people with whom Gaspar Ruiz found
shelter. The father was an old Spaniard, a man of property ruined by the
revolution. His estates, his house in town, his money, everything he had
in the world had been confiscated by proclamation, for he was a bitter
foe of our independence. From a position of great dignity and influence
on the Viceroy's Council he became of less importance than his own negro
slaves made free by our glorious revolution. He had not even the means
to flee the country, as other Spaniards had ma