ourable circumstances, would have
presented a fine appearance. Even in his prison garb, somewhat ragged
and squalid, he looked the gentleman and something more. For there was
that in his air and physiognomy, which proclaimed him no common man.
Captivity may hold and make more fierce, but cannot degrade, the lion.
And just as a lion in its cage seemed this man in a cell of the
Acordada. His face was of the rotund type, bold in its expression, yet
with something of gentle humanity, seen when searched for, in the
profound depths of a dark penetrating eye. His complexion was a clear
olive, such as is common to Mexicans of pure Spanish descent, the
progeny of the Conquistadors; his beard and moustache coal-black, as
also the thick mass of hair that, bushing out and down over his ears,
half concealed them.

Cris Rock "cottoned" to this man on sight. Nor liked him much the less
when told he had been a robber! Cris supposed that in Mexico a robber
may sometimes be an honest man, or at all events, have taken to the road
through some supposed wrong--personal or political. Freebooting is less
a crime, or at all events, more easy of extenuation in a country whose
chief magistrate himself is a freebooter; and such, at this moment,
neither more nor less, was the chief magistrate of Mexico, Don Antonio
Lopez de Santa Anna.

Beyond the fact, or it might be only suspicion, that Ruperto Rivas was a
robber, little seemed to be known of him among the inmates of the
Acordada. He had been there only a short while, and took no part in
their vulgar, commonplace ways of killing time; instead, staying within
his cell. His name had, however, leaked out, and this brought up in the
minds of some of his fellow-prisoners certain reminiscences pointing to
him as one of the road fraternity; no common one either, but the chief
of a band of "salteadores."

Altogether different was the fourth personage entitled to a share in the
cell appropriated to Kearney and Cris Rock; unlike the reputed robber as
the Satyr to Hyperion. In short, a contrast of the completest kind,
both physically and mentally. No two beings claiming to be of human
kind could have presented a greater dissimilarity--being very types of
the extreme. Ruperto Rivas, despite the shabby habiliments in which the
gaol authorities had arrayed him, looked all dignity and grandeur, while
El Zorillo--the little fox, as his prison companions called him--was an
epitomised impersonation