ssity to take part in a conflict opposed alike to his
habits and his ways of thought. But no sooner did he see his antagonist
extended on the floor, bathed in blood and looking as though he were
dead, than he experienced the most poignant anguish, and feared for a
moment that he should faint. He who, until within the last five or six
hours, had held unwaveringly to his resolution of being a priest, a
missionary, a minister and a messenger of the gospel, had committed, or
accused himself of having committed, during those few hours, every
crime, and of breaking all the commandments of God. There was now no
mortal sin by which he was not contaminated. First, his purpose of
leading a life of perfect and heroic holiness had been put to flight;
then followed his purpose of leading a life of holiness of a more easy,
comfortable, and _bourgeois_ sort. The devil seemed to please himself in
over-throwing his plans. He reflected that he could now no longer be
even a Christian Philemon, for to lay his neighbor's head open with a
stroke of a saber was not a very good beginning of his idyl.

Don Luis, after the agitations of the day, was now in a condition
resembling that of a man who has brain-fever. Currito and the captain,
one at each side, took hold of him and led him home.

* * * * *

Don Pedro de Vargas got out of bed in terror when he was told that his
son had come home wounded. He ran to see him, examined his bruises and
the wound in his arm, and saw that they were none of them attended with
danger; but he broke out into threats of vengeance, and would not be
pacified until he was made acquainted with the particulars of the
affair, and learned that Don Luis had known how to avenge himself in
spite of his theology.

The doctor came soon after to examine the wound, and was of opinion that
in three or four days' time Don Luis would be able to go out again, as
if nothing had happened. With the count, on the other hand, it would be
a matter of months. His life, however, was in no danger. He had returned
to consciousness, and had asked to be taken to his own village, which
was distant only a league from the village which these events took
place. A hired coach had been procured, and he had been taken thither,
accompanied by his servant, and the two strangers who had acted as his
seconds.

Four days after the affair the doctor's opinion was justified by the
result, and Don Luis, although sore from