u laced down on the trestle
for poisonous insects to kill, has been on your track for the past
seventeen years, and will soon hold you in his iron gripe! There will be
no mercy then!"

The eyes closed, the heart stopped beating, and the thin lips and
tongue, as dry as cartridge-paper, now took up the strain, while the
mutilated hand clutched convulsively, as if there were fifty fingers
fingering knives and pistols.

"Shall I assassinate my old doctor, and run the risk of being arrested
and hung? No! He thinks me dead, and I will go back to the island,
redeem my treasure, and pass the remainder of my life tranquilly in the
highlands of Scotland!"

Don't be too sanguine, Colonel Lawton; for, though your ten thousand
pounds in gold is still in the vault, yet there is Don Ignacio Sanchez,
whose estates have been confiscated, and who has just got out of ten
years' imprisonment in the Moro of Havana, glad to save his neck from
the iron collar, and, without the little jewel-hilted blade up his
sleeve, is now turning about to see how he may redeem his lost fortunes.
Don't be an hour too late, I pray you, Captain Brand, for that sharp eye
of Don Ignacio has already, perhaps, looked at the shiny cleft in the
crag, and thinks he knows what lies hidden there! Oh, _si_! nothing but
mouldy beans and paper cigars to live upon for ten years, and fond of
more substantial food, even though it were yellow greenish gold,
mildewed by damp, but yet solid and refreshing. _Cierto_--certainly!
_Quien sabe_--who knows?

But be careful, Don Ignacio! Don't take your old wife with you on that
projected expedition, for you have treated that old woman--who resembles
a rotten banana--badly! You have won back in monte all she ever won by
cheating, besides the half ounces you used to give her for the
Church--cheated her by drawing two cards at a time when you saw the
numerals with that spark of an eye, and when you knew that she would win
if you drew fairly! Yes, you have, you old sinner, for more than two
score of years! And she hates you now--though you don't think it--worse
than you did Captain Brand! Have an eye to that old banana!

So passed that short night--long enough, however, for somebody--and
before the fresh land-wind had woke up to creep down the valley, there
was a mettled barb, with open nostrils, galloping up the broken road as
if he had the devil on his back--as perhaps he had, or Colonel Lawton,
or Captain Brand, possibly all thr