group had retired, leaving the
villano standing in a position of formidable defence alone in the
circle.

[Illustration: 450-102]

I can remember that I walked calmly and slowly forward to the spot
assigned me. I can remember the word being given to draw swords, and I
even yet can see the flashing steel as it glistened, and hear the clang
of the scabbards as we flung them from us; but of the encounter itself
I have only the vaguest impression. Cuts, thrusts, parries, advances and
retirings, feints and guards, are all blended up with the exclamations
of the bystanders as, in praise or censure, they followed the encounter.
At last, without knowing why, after a warm rally, my antagonist uttered
a faint cry, and tottering a few paces back, let fall his sword, and
sank heavily to the earth. I sprang forward in dread anxiety; but two of
the others held me back while they cried out, "Basta--Basta, Senhor!" I
tried to force my way past them, but they held me fast; and all that I
could see was one of the group take up the villano's arm and let it go
again, when it fell heavily to the ground with a dull bang I shall never
forget! They then threw his cloak over him, and I saw him no more.

"What are ye waitin' for, lad?" whispered Seth. "You don't want to
attend his funeral, I reckon?"

"Is he--is he------?" I could n't get the word out for worlds.

"By course he is; and so will you be, if ye don't make a bolt of it."

I have some recollection of an angry altercation between Seth and
myself,--I refusing, and he insisting on my instant flight; but it ended
somehow in my finding myself galloping along the Guajuaqualla road at a
furious pace, and, to my extreme surprise, feeling now as eager about my
safety as before I had been indifferent to it.

I became conscious of this from the sense of uneasiness I experienced
as each horseman neared me, and the danger of pursuit aroused in me the
instinct of self-preservation.

A rude sign-post at the foot of a rugged mountain path apprised me where
the "miners' trail" led off to Guajuaqualla; so, dismounting from my
"mustang," now wearied and blown by a pretty sharp pace for above seven
miles, I turned the animal loose and set off on foot. I know of no
descent so great in life as from the "saddle" to the "sole!" from the
inspiriting pleasure of being carried along at will, to the plodding
slowness of mere pedestrianism. In the one case you "shoot your sorrows
flying;" in the other,