bout the senorita, for I prefer not to think about her at
all when I am amongst you.'

"He looked, with a frown, all about the room, full of smoking and
talking officers. Of course I did not insist.

"These, senores, were the last words I was to hear him utter for a long,
long time. The very next day we embarked for our arduous expedition to
Peru, and we only heard of Gaspar Ruiz' doings in the midst of battles
of our own. He had been appointed military guardian of our southern
province. He raised a partida. But his leniency to the conquered foe
displeased the Civil Governor, who was a formal, uneasy man, full of
suspicions. He forwarded reports against Gaspar Ruiz to the Supreme
Government; one of them being that he had married publicly, with great
pomp, a woman of Royalist tendencies. Quarrels were sure to arise
between these two men of very different character. At last the Civil
Governor began to complain of his inactivity, and to hint at treachery,
which, he wrote, would be not surprising in a man of such antecedents.
Gaspar Ruiz heard of it. His rage flamed up, and the woman ever by his
side knew how to feed it with perfidious words. I do not know
whether really the Supreme Government ever did--as he complained
afterwards--send orders for his arrest. It seems certain that the
Civil Governor began to tamper with his officers, and that Gaspar Ruiz
discovered the fact.

"One evening, when the Governor was giving a tertullia Gaspar Ruiz,
followed by six men he could trust, appeared riding through the town to
the door of the Government House, and entered the sala armed, his hat on
his head. As the Governor, displeased, advanced to meet him, he seized
the wretched man round the body, carried him off from the midst of the
appalled guests, as though he were a child, and flung him down the outer
steps into the street. An angry hug from Gaspar Ruiz was enough to crush
the life out of a giant; but in addition Gaspar Ruiz' horsemen fired
their pistols at the body of the Governor as it lay motionless at the
bottom of the stairs."

X

"AFTER this--as he called it--act of justice, Ruiz crossed the Rio
Blanco, followed by the greater part of his band, and entrenched himself
upon a hill A company of regular troops sent out foolishly against him
was surrounded, and destroyed almost to a man. Other expeditions, though
better organised, were equally unsuccessful.

"It was during these sanguinary skirmishes that his wife f