e are no police to protect you--here we are
alone in the desert where names and titles are nothing, standing man to
man."

"An old man to a young one," I returned. "And in virtue of my youth I am
your superior. Do you wish me to take you by the throat and shake your
insolence out of you?"

"What, do you threaten me with violence?" he exclaimed, throwing himself
into a hostile attitude. "You, the man I saved, and sheltered, and fed,
and treated like a son! Destroyer of my peace, have you not injured me
enough? You have stolen my grandchild's heart from me; with a thousand
inventions you have driven her mad! My child, my angel, Rima, my
saviour! With your lying tongue you have changed her into a demon to
persecute me! And you are not satisfied, but must finish your evil work
by inflicting blows on my worn body! All, all is lost to me! Take my
life if you wish it, for now it is worth nothing and I desire not to
keep it!" And here he threw himself on his knees and, tearing open his
old, ragged mantle, presented his naked breast to me. "Shoot! Shoot!" he
screeched. "And if you have no weapon take my knife and plunge it into
this sad heart, and let me die!" And drawing his knife from its sheath,
he flung it down at my feet.

All this performance only served to increase my anger and contempt; but
before I could make any reply I caught sight of a shadowy object at some
distance moving towards us--something grey and formless, gliding swift
and noiseless, like some great low-flying owl among the trees. It was
Rima, and hardly had I seen her before she was with us, facing old
Nuflo, her whole frame quivering with passion, her wide-open eyes
appearing luminous in that dim light.

"You are here!" she cried in that quick, ringing tone that was almost
painful to the sense. "You thought to escape me! To hide yourself from
my eyes in the wood! Miserable! Do you not know that I have need of
you--that I have not finished with you yet? Do you, then, wish to be
scourged to Riolama with thorny twigs--to be dragged thither by the
beard?"

He had been staring open-mouthed at her, still on his knees, and holding
his mantle open with his skinny hands. "Rima! Rima! have mercy on me!"
he cried out piteously. "I cannot go to Riolama, it is so far--so far.
And I am old and should meet my death. Oh, Rima, child of the woman I
saved from death, have you no compassion? I shall die, I shall die!"

"Shall you die? Not until you have shown me the w