go in peace if he could only plead with
her! But to let the dagger fall from his teeth would be to disarm
himself, and he was hardly ready for that; and there was much thinking
and planning to be done within a very few minutes.

Velasco, still with his gaze on the black hole in the pistol-barrel,
soon made a discouraging discovery; the position in which he had been
arrested was insecure and uncomfortable, and the unusual strain that it
brought upon his muscles became painful and exhausting. To shift his
position even in the smallest way would be to invite the bullet. As the
moments flew the strain upon particular sets of muscles increased his
pain with alarming rapidity, and unconsciously he began to speculate
upon the length of time that remained before his suffering would lead
him into recklessness and death. While he was thus approaching a very
agony of pain, with the end of all human endurance not far away,
another was suffering in a different manner, but hardly less severely.

The beautiful senora held the choice of two lives in the barrel of her
pistol; but that she should thus hold any life at all was a matter that
astounded, perplexed, and agonized her; that she had the courage to be
in so extraordinary a position amazed her beyond estimation. Now, when
one reflects that one is courageous, one's courage is questionable. And
then, she was really so tender-hearted that she wondered if she could
make good her threat to shoot if the murderer should move. That he
believed she would was sufficient.

But after the arrival of her husband--what then? With his passionate
nature could he resist the temptation to cut the fellow's throat before
her very eyes? That was too horrible to think of. But--God!--the robber
himself had a knife! By thus summoning her husband was she not inviting
him to a mortal struggle with a desperate man better armed than he? It
would have been easy to liberate Basilio and let him go his way; but
she knew that her husband would follow and find him. Now that the
mischief of notifying him had been done, it was best to keep the
prisoner with her, that she might plead for his life. Therein lay her
hope that she could avert the shedding of blood by either of the men.
Her suspense; her self-questionings; her dread of a terrible
termination to an incident which already had assumed the shape of a
tragedy; her fearful responsibility; the menacing possibility that she
herself, in simple defence of her life