his arm in a
sling. An invalid, interesting from the cause which made him an
invalid, he gave his own account of it, knowing there was but little
danger of its being contradicted; Duperon's temper, he understood, with
that of the French doctor, securing silence. The others were all G.T.T.
(gone to Texas), the hack-drivers, as he had taken pains to assure
himself. No fear, therefore, of what he alleged getting denial or being
called in question.

It was to the effect that he had fought Florence Kearney, and given more
and worse wounds than he himself had received--enough of them, and
sufficiently dangerous, to make it likely that his adversary would not
long survive.

He did not say this to Luisa Valverde--only to her father. When she
heard it second hand, it came nigh killing her. But then the informant
had gone away--perhaps luckily for himself--and could not further be
questioned. When met again in Mexico, months after, he told the same
tale. He had no doubt, however, that his duelling adversary, so
terribly gashed as to be in danger of dying, still lived. For an
American paper which gave an account of the battle of Mier, had spoken
of Captain Kearney in eulogistic terms, while not giving his name in the
death list; this Santander had read. The presumption, therefore, was of
Kearney being among the survivors.

Thus stood things in the city of Mexico at the time the Mier prisoners
entered it, as relates to the persons who have so far found place in our
story--Carlos Santander, a colonel on the staff of the Dictator; Don
Ignacio Valverde, a Minister of State; his daughter, a reigning belle of
society, with no aspirations therefor, but solely on account of her
beauty; Florence Kearney, late Captain of the Texan filibusters, with
Cris Rock, guide, scout, and general skirmisher of the same--these last
shut up in a loathsome prison, one linked leg to leg with a robber, the
other sharing the chain of a murderer, alike crooked in soul as in body!

That for the Texan prisoners there was yet greater degradation in
store--one of them, Kearney, was made aware the moment after the
gaol-governor had so unceremoniously shut the door of their cell. The
teaching of Don Ignacio in New Orleans had not been thrown away upon
him; and this, with the practice since accruing through conversation
with the soldiers of their escort, had made him almost a master of the
Spanish tongue.

Carlos Santander either did not think of thi