mpanions. I had no such luck. But, anyhow, they cut
five years off my time. So there are only six years more between us."

Regularly the letters came and went between Rafaela and the prisoner at
Ceuta. Two years more drew to their close.

But evil fortune had not yet grown weary of stamping its heel on Amadeo
Zureda's honest shoulders.

"Please forgive me, dear Rafaela," the prisoner wrote again, after a
while, "the new sorrow I must cause you. But by the life of our son I
swear I could not avoid the misfortune which most expectedly is going to
prolong our separation, for I don't know how long.

"As you may guess, there are few saints among the rough crowd here, that
are scraped up from all the prisons in Spain. Though I have to live
among them, I don't consider them my equals. For that reason I try to
keep away from them, and have nothing to do with their rough mirth or
noisy quarrels. Well, it happened that the end of last week a
smart-Aleck of a fellow came in, an Andalusian. He had been given twelve
years for killing one man and badly injuring another. As soon as this
fellow saw me, he took me for a boob he could make sport of, and lost no
chance of poking fun at me. I kept quiet, and--so as not to get into any
mix-up with him--turned my back on him.

"Yesterday, at dinner, he tried to pick a quarrel. Some of the other
prisoners laughed and set him on to me.

"'Look here, Amadeo,' said he. 'What are you in for?'

"I answered, looking him square in the eyes:

"'For having killed a man.'

"'And what did you kill him for?' he insisted.

"I said nothing, and then he added something very coarse and ugly that I
won't repeat. It's enough for you to know your name was mixed up in it.
That's why your name was the last word his mouth ever uttered. I drew my
knife--you know that in spite of all the care they take, and all their
searches, we all go armed--and cried:

"'Look out for yourself, now, because I'm going to kill you!'

"Then we fought, and it was a good fight, too, because he was a brave
man. But his courage was of no use to him. He died on the spot.

"Forgive me, dearest Rafaela of my soul, and make our boy forgive me,
too. This makes my situation much worse, because now I shall have
another trial and I don't know what sentence I'll get. I realize it was
very bad of me to kill this man, but if I hadn't done it he would have
killed me, which would have been much worse for all of us."

Several months af