at him: "Come in, come in. This
house belongs to you. All this land belongs to you. Come and take it."

"For the love of God," Gaspar Ruiz murmured.

"Does not all the land belong to you patriots?" the voice on the other
side of the door screamed on. "Are you not a patriot?"

Gaspar Ruiz did not know. "I am a wounded man," he said apathetically.

All became still inside. Gaspar Ruiz lost the hope of being admitted,
and lay down under the porch just outside the door. He was utterly
careless of what was going to happen to him. All his consciousness
seemed to be concentrated in his neck, where he felt a severe pain. His
indifference as to his fate was genuine.

The day was breaking when he awoke from a feverish doze; the door
at which he had knocked in the dark stood wide open now, and a girl,
steadying herself with her outspread arms, leaned over the threshold.
Lying on his back, he stared up at her. Her face was pale and her eyes
were very dark; her hair hung down black as ebony against her white
cheeks; her lips were full and red. Beyond her he saw another head with
long grey hair, and a thin old face with a pair of anxiously clasped
hands under the chin.

VI

"I KNEW those people by sight," General Santierra would tell his guests
at the dining-table. "I mean the people with whom Gaspar Ruiz found
shelter. The father was an old Spaniard, a man of property, ruined by
the revolution. His estates, his house in town, his money, everything
he had in the world had been confiscated by proclamation, for he was
a bitter foe of our independence. From a position of great dignity and
influence on the Viceroy's Council he became of less importance than his
own negro slaves made free by our glorious revolution. He had not even
the means to flee the country, as other Spaniards had managed to do. It
may be that, wandering ruined and houseless, and burdened with nothing
but his life, which was left to him by the clemency of the Provisional
Government, he had simply walked under that broken roof of old tiles. It
was a lonely spot. There did not seem to be even a dog belonging to
the place. But though the roof had holes, as if a cannonball or two had
dropped through it, the wooden shutters were thick and tight-closed all
the time.

"My way took me frequently along the path in front of that miserable
rancho. I rode from the fort to the town almost every evening, to sigh
at the window of a lady I was in love with, then. When