another tone. But truly, now, should I not have
been a very simple Jago to have passed my life as driver of your mules, or
perhaps of the _gente irracionale_, as you call the poor devils of
Indians? Ah! your worshipful uncle is a right noble and powerful
caballero, speaks little but thinks much, and does more, and has his hand
over all Mexico and the _madre patria_, and perhaps a step further; but
believe me he would speak to Jago in a very different manner from that
adopted by his nephew, the son of the tolerably-noble senor Don Sebastian.
The count is a very noble gentleman; but when he made over one of his
finest estates to your father, he committed a blunder that cost him three
hundred able-bodied Indians. Ha ha!" continued the man, raising his
sombrero from his head and setting it on again, a little on one side; "you
cannot forgive poor Jago for having walked off with the three hundred
Indians, who suddenly took a fancy to leave the peaceable hacienda of Don
Sebastian, and follow the great Hidalgo, after the example of your very
humble servant. But only think now; for three hundred lean oxen, which
your worshipful father was kind enough to give to a like number of those
poor devils, they had to toil a whole year; and, by the blessed Virgin, St
Christopher did not sweat more when he carried the infant Jesus through
the flood! It happened to those poor Indians just as it did to St
Christopher. The longer they toiled the heavier grew the load; and as they
had not the thews and sinews of the saint, they at last sank under the
burthen. So far from being able to pay for the oxen, they got every year
deeper into your tolerably-noble father's debt. Can you wonder, then, that
they threw aside spades and baskets, and joined the army of Hidalgo?"

However galling the patriot captain's observations were to the young
nobleman, the latter could not help being struck by their justice.

"Do you think we are dogs, senor?" continued Jago. "You are a _blanco_, a
white, not one of our rulers certainly, but of as pure blood as any of
then. _You_ have never felt the _infamia de derecho_[36] weighing upon
you, following you like your shadow, and worse, for _that_ at least leaves
one during the rains; and yet _my_ father was as good a father as any
Spaniard's could be, and my mother as good a mother. But what was the use
of that? Jago is a Metis. He is infamous, and his children's children
after him."

The man had touched briefly, but a