eraphina, stooping over his shoulder, took it up, twisted the
thing swiftly. "Take, _amigo_," she said.

He was looking up at her, as if struck dumb, roiling his eye wildly. He
jumped up.

"You--Senorita! For a miserable old man! You break my heart."

And with long strides he disappeared in the darkness, leaving us
wondering.

We sat side by side on the couch of leaves. With Castro there I felt
we were quite equal to dealing with the two Lugarenos if they had the
unlucky idea of intruding upon us. Indeed, a vigilant man, posted on one
side of the end of the passage, could have disputed the entrance against
ten, twenty, almost any number, as long as he kept his strength and had
something heavy enough to knock them over. Faint sounds reached me, as
if at a great distance Castro had been shouting to himself. I called to
him. He did not answer, but unexpectedly his short person showed itself
in the brightest part of the light.

"Senor!" he called out with a strange intonation. I got up and went
to him. He seemed to be listening intently with his ear turned to the
opening. Then suddenly:

"Look at me, Senor. Am I Castro--the same Castro? old and friendless?"

He stood biting his forefinger and looking up at me from under his
knitted eyebrows. I didn't know what to say. What was this nonsense?

He ejaculated a sort of incomprehensible babble, and, passing by me,
rushed towards Seraphina; she sat up, startled, on her couch of leaves.
Falling before her on his plump knees, he seized her hand, pressed it
against his ragged moustache.

"Excellency, forgive me! No--no forgiveness! Ha! old man! Ha--thou old
man...."

He bowed before her shadowy figure, that sustained the pale oval of
the face, till his forehead struck the rock. Plunging his hand into the
ashes, he poured a fistful with inarticulate low cries over his gray
hairs; and the agitation of that obese little body on its knees had a
lamentable and grotesque inconsequence, as inexplicable in itself as
the sorrow of a madman. Full of wonder before his abject collapse, she
murmured:

"What have you done?"

He tried to fling himself upon her feet, but my hand was in his collar,
and after an unmerciful shaking, I sat him down by main force. He
gulped, blinked the whites of his eyes, then, in a whisper full of rage:

"Horror, shame, misery, and malediction; I have betrayed you."

At once she said soothingly, "Tomasr I do not believe this"; while I
thought to mys