n of concentrated malignity that seemed
to freeze the very marrow in my bones. But I believed that he was
deliberately striving to frighten me, and horrified though I actually
was, I was determined he should not have the satisfaction of feeling
that he had succeeded. I, therefore, steadily returned his stare with
all the coolness and nonchalance I could summon to my aid, and after the
lapse of a full minute or more he turned his glance aside to one of the
men who held me, and said:

"Well, Carlos, my ruse succeeded, it would appear. But it is a poor
sort of capture that you have made; I hoped you would contrive to get
hold of Don Luis, or at least of Don Esteban, or one of his sons; but
who is this? He is a mere boy!"

"True, he is," answered the man addressed as Carlos--the scoundrel who
had taken advantage of an appeal to my humanity to catch me unawares.
"But," he continued, "boy though he is, he is as strong as a young lion,
and will afford us sport for three or four days, if things are carefully
managed; and after that--" He added a few words in some language that I
did not understand.

"But who is he, and what is he?" snarled the other. "He does not look
like a Spaniard."

"He is not a Spaniard," answered Carlos. "Pepe, one of the Bella Vista
`boys' who joined us last night, told me that there was a young
Englishman in the house who had been found by old Tomasso, Don Luis'
fisherman, floating about on a piece of wreckage, nearly dead, and had
been brought ashore by him and, at Don Luis' orders, taken up to the
house and nursed back to health by Mama Elisa; and without doubt this is
he."

"Is this so?" demanded the quintessence of ugliness, turning his gaze
upon me.

"It is," answered I. "And perhaps it may prevent misunderstanding and
attachment of blame to the wrong people if I explain that it is I who am
responsible for the defence of Bella Vista and the losses that you have
sustained. It was I who supervised the erection of the barricades, and
who also arranged the plan upon which we fought."

"A-h!" he breathed, and the note of diabolical malignity with which he
contrived to imbue that single word sent a shudder of fear through me,
so intense was it. "Then, perhaps," he continued, "you may be able to
tell us whose hand it was who slew Petion, our late leader?"

"As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb," thought I, and answered at
once "Yes. As a matter of fact I am responsible for that, too