household upon its guard and, by demonstrating to them my
imprudence, open their eyes to the fact that all danger was not
necessarily over because the brigands had withdrawn.

My companions were in high feather at having achieved my capture, and
extolled the shrewdness of a certain Mateo--who, I gathered from their
remarks, was their new chief, in place of the deceased Petion--in having
devised so ingenious a trap as the one into which I had unsuspectingly
fallen. Moreover, they endeavoured to beguile the way by drawing vivid
word-pictures--presumably in the hope of frightening me and enjoying my
terror--of the unspeakable torments that would be inflicted upon me by
way of appeasing the manes of those of their comrades who had fallen in
the attack upon the house. Truly I might very well have been excused
had I blenched at the prospect which, according to them, lay before me;
for if they were to be believed, it was not an hour or two, but several
days of excruciating suffering which I might expect. However, I did not
by any means believe all that they said. They might be clever enough
actors, so far as shamming being wounded was concerned, but in the finer
art of inflicting suffering in anticipation they were mere clumsy
bunglers, for they lacked that finer sense of dissimulation which endows
a man with the power of lying with conviction; they allowed their motive
to become apparent; and, seeing this, I disappointed them by laughing in
their faces. Besides, whether what they said was truth or falsehood, I
was not going to afford a trio of sable outlaws the satisfaction of
boasting that they had succeeded in frightening an Englishman.

Enlivening the way with such conversation as I have hinted at, we
trudged along the upward path for a distance of about a mile and a half,
when we suddenly came upon a wide-open space where the main body of the
outlaws had halted to rest and refresh themselves, and also, as I soon
became aware by the trend of the general conversation, to determine
whether they should return to their head-quarters, or proceed to attack
some other estate in the immediate neighbourhood.

My appearance, in the character of a prisoner, was the signal for a
great yell of ferocious delight on the part of the outlaws, immediately
followed by a brisk fusillade of scurrilous, ribald jests concerning the
sport that they would have with me upon their return to their mountain
stronghold; and so bloodcurdling were