" added the Donna Luisa, plucking a diamond ring from one
of her fingers, and presenting it at the same time.

"No!" protested the faithful servitor. "Neither the one nor the other.
Enough reward to me to know I've done your ladyship a service--if I
have."

"But, good Jose," urged the Countess, "you must either take my watch or
the worth of it in gold _doblones_! That was the understanding, and I
shall insist on your adhering to it."

"_Muy bein, Condesa_; I consent to that. But only on the condition that
the gentlemen get safe off. Till we're sure of that, I beg your
ladyship won't look upon me as a creditor."

"If her ladyship should," here put in a third personage of the sex
feminine, who had just entered upon the scene, "if she should, I'll pay
the debt myself. I pay it now--there!"

It was Pepita who thus delivered herself, as she did so bounding
forward, flinging her arms around his neck, and giving him a sonorous
kiss upon the cheek! Then, as she released her lips after the smack,
adding--

"I've given you that, _hombre_, for what? Why nothing more than doing
your duty. Ha, ha, ha!"

The laughter neither disconcerted nor vexed him. It was not scornful,
while the kiss had been very sweet. Long-coveted, but hitherto
withheld, he looked upon it as an earnest of many others to follow, with
a reward he would more value than all the watches and rings in Mexico--
the possession of Pepita herself.

CHAPTER FORTY TWO.

A HOLY BROTHERHOOD.

"Where the deuce am I?"

It was Florence Kearney who asked this question, interrogating himself;
time, the morning after their retreat up the mountain. He was lying on
a low pallet, or rather bench of mason work, with a palm mat spread over
it, his only coverlet the cloak he had brought with him from Don
Ignacio's carriage. The room was of smallest dimensions, some eight or
nine feet square, pierced by a single window, a mere pigeon-hole without
sash or glass.

He was yet only half awake, and, as his words show, with but a confused
sense of his whereabouts. His brain was in a whirl from the excitement
through which he had been passing, so long sustained. Everything around
seemed weird and dream-like.

Rubbing his eyes to make sure it was a reality, and raising his head
from the hard pillow, he took stock of what the room contained. An easy
task that. Only a ricketty chair, on which lay a pair of duelling
pistols--one of the pairs found under the car