know how to protect the peaceful populations we
leave behind us to pursue our sacred task.' And he embraced the silent
Gaspar Ruiz by his side.

"Later on, when we all rose from table, I approached the latest officer
of the army with my congratulations. 'And, Captain Ruiz,' I added,
'perhaps you do not mind telling a man who has always believed in
the uprightness of your character what became of Dona Erminia on that
night?'

"At this friendly question his aspect changed. He looked at me from
under his eyebrows with the heavy, dull glance of a guasso--of a
peasant. 'Senor teniente,' he said, thickly, and as if very much cast
down, 'do not ask me about the senorita, for I prefer not to think about
her at all when I am amongst you."

"He looked, with a frown, all about the room, full of smoking and
talking officers. Of course I did not insist.

"These, senores, were the last words I was to hear him utter for a long,
long time. The very next day we embarked for our arduous expedition to
Peru, and we only heard of Gaspar Ruiz' doings in the midst of battles
of our own. He had been appointed military guardian of our southern
province. He raised a partida. But his leniency to the conquered foe
displeased the Civil Governor, who was a formal, uneasy man, full of
suspicions. He forwarded reports against Gaspar Ruiz to the Supreme
Government; one of them being that he had married publicly, with great
pomp, a woman of Royalist tendencies. Quarrels were sure to arise
between these two men of very different character. At last the Civil
Governor began to complain of his inactivity and to hint at treachery,
which, he wrote, would be not surprising in a man of such antecedents.
Gaspar Ruiz heard of it. His rage flamed up, and the woman ever by his
side knew how to feed it with perfidious words. I do not know
whether really the Supreme Government ever did--as he complained
afterwards--send orders for his arrest. It seems certain that the
Civil Governor began to tamper with his officers, and that Gaspar Ruiz
discovered the fact.

"One evening, when the Governor was giving a tertullia, Gaspar Ruiz,
followed by six men he could trust, appeared riding through the town to
the door of the Government House, and entered the sala armed, his hat on
his head. As the Governor, displeased, advanced to meet him, he seized
the wretched man round the body, carried him off from the midst of the
appalled guests, as though he were a child, and flun