from a gentle and melancholy dignity which filled me with respect
against my will. Senores, we are no match for women. But I could hardly
believe my ears when she began her tale. Providence, she concluded,
seemed to have preserved the life of that wronged soldier, who now
trusted to my honour as a caballero and to my compassion for his
sufferings.

"'Wronged man,' I observed, coldly. 'Well, I think so, too: and you have
been harbouring an enemy of your cause.'

"'He was a poor Christian crying for help at our door in the name of
God, senor,' she answered, simply.

"I began to admire her. 'Where is he now?' I asked, stiffly.

"But she would not answer that question. With extreme cunning, and an
almost fiendish delicacy, she managed to remind me of my failure in
saving the lives of the prisoners in the guardroom, without wounding
my pride. She knew, of course, the whole story. Gaspar Ruiz, she said,
entreated me to procure for him a safe-conduct from General San
Martin himself. He had an important communication to make to the
commander-in-chief.

"Por Dios, senores, she made me swallow all that, pretending to be only
the mouthpiece of that poor man. Overcome by injustice, he expected to
find, she said, as much generosity in me as had been shown to him by the
Royalist family which had given him a refuge.

"Ha! It was well and nobly said to a youngster like me. I thought her
great. Alas! she was only implacable.

"In the end I rode away very enthusiastic about the business, without
demanding even to see Gaspar Ruiz, who I was confident was in the house.

"But on calm reflection I began to see some difficulties which I had not
confidence enough in myself to encounter. It was not easy to approach a
commander-in-chief with such a story. I feared failure. At last I thought
it better to lay the matter before my general-of-division, Robles, a
friend of my family, who had appointed me his aide-de-camp lately.

"He took it out of my hands at once without any ceremony.

"'In the house! of course he is in the house,' he said contemptuously.
'You ought to have gone sword in hand inside and demanded his surrender,
instead of chatting with a Royalist girl in the porch. Those people
should have been hunted out of that long ago. Who knows how many spies
they have harboured right in the very midst of our camps? A safe-conduct
from the Commander-in-Chief! The audacity of the fellow! Ha! ha! Now
we shall catch him to-night, and