ere he
would in the end be recognised as Gaspar Ruiz--the deserter to the
Royalists--and no doubt shot very effectually this time. There did not
seem any place in the world for the innocent Gaspar Ruiz anywhere.
And at this thought his simple soul surrendered itself to gloom and
resentment as black as night.

They had made him a soldier forcibly. He did not mind being a soldier.
And he had been a good soldier as he had been a good son, because of his
docility and his strength. But now there was no use for either. They had
taken him from his parents, and he could no longer be a soldier--not a
good soldier at any rate. Nobody would listen to his explanations. What
injustice it was! What injustice!

And in a mournful murmur he would go over the story of his capture and
recapture for the twentieth time. Then, raising his eyes to the silent
girl in the doorway, "Si, senorita," he would say with a deep sigh,
"injustice has made this poor breath in my body quite worthless to me
and to anybody else. And I do not care who robs me of it."

One evening, as he exhaled thus the plaint of his wounded soul, she
condescended to say that, if she were a man, she would consider no life
worthless which held the possibility of revenge.

She seemed to be speaking to herself. Her voice was low. He drank in the
gentle, as if dreamy sound, with a consciousness of peculiar delight, of
something warming his breast like a draught of generous wine.

"True, senorita," he said, raising his face up to hers slowly: "there is
Estaban, who must be shown that I am not dead after all."

The mutterings of the mad father had ceased long before; the sighing
mother had withdrawn somewhere into one of the empty rooms. All was
still within as well as without, in the moonlight bright as day on the
wild orchard full of inky shadows. Gaspar Ruiz saw the dark eyes of Dona
Erminia look down at him.

"Ala! The sergeant," she muttered disdainfully.

"Why! He has wounded me with his sword," he protested, bewildered by the
contempt that seemed to shine livid on her pale face.

She crushed him with her glance. The power of her will to be understood
was so strong that it kindled in him the intelligence of unexpressed
things.

"What else did you expect me to do?" he cried, as if suddenly driven to
despair. "Have I the power to do more? Am I a general with an army at my
back?--miserable sinner that I am to be despised by you at last."

VIII

"SENORES," r