The strangers had not ridden many yards
across the meadow, before one of the servants
spurred his horse sharply forward, and riding
up alongside of his master, said—

“I do not know, my lord, what the girl
meant, when she said there was no stabling;
for I never laid my eyes, in all my life, on a
neater rack and manger than were in that shed
or outhouse—and a good steel chain with a
running billet, and a head-stall of Spanish
leather, fit for a count's charger. Good store
there was of bedding, too, and better maize
than we have at the fort for the troop horses.
Nor was that all, senor, for there had stood a
horse there within twelve hours—there was
fresh dung in the stall.”

“I know—I know, Pacheco, all about it,”
replied Guzman, “and thou shalt know, too,
one of these days—so thou wilt only hold thy
peace—one word blabbed at the guard-room or
canteen will spoil everything.”

“You may trust me, my lord—I never
talk!”

“I know you never do, Pacheco,” answered
Herreiro; “you are a faithful fellow, as
well as a stout soldier.”

The man touched his bonnet, and fell back
to his companion, highly gratified, and began
inculcating to him the necessity of silence.

“Well—I hope you are now satisfied,” said

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the sailor. “I hope you are satisfied that, as
yon runagate Charib dog informed you, Hernando
comes hither to court you Indian beauty
She is temptation enough, truly, without bringing
treason in to aid. Why, she would set
half Ferdinand's court afire with those eyes of
hers, half passionate lustre and half sleepy
languor!”

“Satisfied am I, right well, that thou art a
fool, Gomez,” said Herreiro; “I doubt not now
that you fancy I shall abandon it—”

“I don't see, for my part, what there is to
abandon, or to prosecute either. Here has
Hernando de Leon seduced a pretty Indian, and
passes all his spare time fondling her—well!
there is no sin against martial law in that, I
trow—or if there be, few of us here shall
escape the provost marshal. Or if you like
better, he is wooing her to honorable marriage—
and that the old admiral is like to consider
an especial service; particularly when the
wooer stands so high for prowess as Hernando;
and when the bride is the niece of the
unconquered Caonabo—why, he will deem it
a sure pledge of the pacification of the race.”

“I thought as much—just such an argument
as a thick-skulled, addle-brained sailor
like yourself would be sure to draw from it.
But I—I can see further. I will so plot it,
that I will brew from these ingredients—”

“Beware that your brewing,” interrupted
the other, “return not bitterly to your own
lips. For all that I can see, all you are like
to gain in this matter, is that Hernando will
knock your brains out, like a mad dog's, for
meddling with his inamorata.”

“Would God that he would try it—I ask
nothing better—anything, anything to give me
a chance of one fair thrust at his accursed
heart!”

“I' faith, you are a good hater—whatever
you may be beside,” answered the sailor Gomez;
“but, for my part, I cannot see why you
hate the lad so deadly. They tell me he has
saved your life some three or four times—”

“Thrice! thrice! curses be on his head!”
replied Don Guzman, gnashing his teeth with
deadly spite. “It is for that—for that I hate
him! From the first time I ever saw him, I felt
that in him was my bane. In everything he
has crossed my path—in everything outdone
me, foiled, defeated me—his praises are the
deadliest poison to my soul—and, from my
school-days upward, his praises have never for
a moment ceased to ring trumpet-like in my
ears. Then, as in veriest spite of Fortune, he
must make me the very butt whereon to prove
his valor, his magnanimity, his self-devotion—
he must force me, whom it well nigh choked
in the utterance, to swell the burden of his
glory. Death to his soul! how I hate him!—
and then, here, here is new cause for hatred, if
there were none before.”

“Here?—new cause here?—in what, I prithee?”

“Here!—art thou blind, Gomez? Here in
this girl, this angel, this Guarica!—but if I
call the fiend himself to aid, here I will outdo
him.”

Gomez looked long and steadily in his companion's
face, as if he would fain have read
something there, which he expected; but, disappointed,
he withdrew his eyes, and shook
his head doubtfully.

“What, in the name of all the fiends of hell!
dost thou stare so for? What seest thou in my
face, man, to fascinate thee?”

“Naught! Guzman—naught! I looked to
see utter madness—stark lunacy—sheer frenzy!
but I see none of these things—and yet so
surely as there is a God in heaven, thou must
be mad—”

“For what should I be mad—I pray thee?”
answered Herreiro, angrily! “my pulse is as
cool as thine, my brain a thousand times more
clear, and vivid in conception—for what should
I be mad?—for loving this most perfect of
heaven's creatures?”

“Aye! for that very thing—most vivldly
mad!” replied the sailor. “I knew you ever
for a fierce and voluptuous devil, but thy blood
must indeed be like Greek fire to blaze out thus
unquenchable at one spark from a brown
wench's eye!—most wildly mad in this—and
absolutely frenzied, when you would dream of
winning her from De Leon. Why he hath
had her heart, possessed her soul, these six
months—and think you that he is so weak a
rival, and that too, when so stabilished in her
favors? Why, if you and he were to start
fairly, he could give you his topsails and beat
you; as I have seen an Algerine felucca run
our best caravellas hull down in an hour.
Tush! man, think better of it—to judge by one
look I saw her give you, were you the only one
in the island, she would have none of you!”

“I will have her—or die for it!” answered
Don Guzman, fiercely. “So let that be the
end of it!”

“The end of it, then, let it be—as it will
sure enough! For Hernando will kill you
like a rat, as soon as he finds you meddling
with his Bonnibella. But we had better ride
on somewhat quickly now, and get out of his
track; for we are in the very path he always
rides; and he is off his guard by this time, and
is now flying hitherward, I warrant me, upon
the wings of hot anticipation!”

“That is the first word of sense you have
spoken to-night,” said Herreiro; “let us gallop.”

And with the word they put their horses to
their speed, and dashed along the sort of forest
path, which had been worn in the virgin soil
by the hoofs of De Leon's Andalusian, so constantly
during the last six months had he

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passed and repassed between the cottage of his love
and the Spanish fortress. After an hour's riding
they came to a spot where a broad shallow
rivulet, flowing upon a pebbly bed, rippled
across the path, and turning abruptly into its
channel to the left hand of Hernando's track,
they descended it slowly, the waters rarely
mounting above their horses' fetlocks, for
something better than a mile, where it flowed
out of the shadowy woods, into an open plain
or bega, wide of Hernando's route, across
which they sped rapidly towards Isabella.

It was not, probably, half an hour after the
time of their turning into the stream that the
tramp of a horse, had there been any one there
to listen, might have been heard coming up
from the settlements, and in a moment or two,
De Leon, followed by his trusty hounds, cantered
along the path; but as he reached the little
ford he pulled up suddenly, for there, in
the centre of the horse track, stooping down as
if to examine some late footprints in the mois!
soil, stood the Charib boy Orozimbo.

“Ha! Orozimbo—what hath brought thee
so far from home at this untimely hour!”

“Knavery, if not villany, Hernando,” answered
the youth, in Spanish, which he spoke
now with much more accuracy, both of pronunciation
and of syntax, than he had done at
his first meeting with De Leon; but still not
nearly with so correct an emphasis as his beautiful
sister—“and perchance treason!”

“Treason!” cried the young Spaniard, “by
whom, or whom against? what do you mean,
boy?”

“By whom, I know not,” answered Orozimbo,
“but against thee, if I err not.” And
he proceeded to relate to him the circumstances
of the visit Guarica had received that day; and
their reasons for suspecting that all was not
right, nor as it seemed to be. He described the
persons of the riders with a degree of minute
accuracy, extending to the smallest details of
their dress, to the fashion of their spurs, the
ornaments of their sword hilts, the marks and
colors of their horses, the very spots on their
hounds; such things as no mortal eye, save of
an Indian, could have observed in so short a
period, as had enabled him to take in and comprehend
the whole.

At first, Hernando de Leon listened half carelessly,
thinking in his own mind that the visit
must have been purely accidental, attaching
little consequence to the details, and half inclined
to smile at the habitual suspicion of the
Indian, so characteristically and needlessly displayed.

Soon, however, it appeared that his attention
was excited, for he now listened eagerly, asked
two or three quick and pertinent questions, to
which he received answers as intelligent and
clear—and, after the boy had ceased speaking,
pondered for a few moments deeply, and then
said—

“That is odd—it must have been Gomez
Aria, with Guzman de Herreiro—there are no
others in the fortress to whom this description
could apply—”

“Yes! yes!” interrupted Orozimbo, eagerly;
`I had forgotten that—Guarica heard the short
man call the other, `Guzman.' It was they, I
am sure of it. Are they friends of yours?—
are they true men?”

“Herreiro is: I would stake my soul's salvation
on it! I have saved his life thrice, at
the risk of my own. And as for Gomez, he
is a good blunt sailor—and I have never
wronged him. Yet it is passing strange. You
say they rode home by this path?”

“To this spot, and here they have turned off
down the rivulet's bed to avoid meeting you;
knew they the hour at which you would leave
Isabella?”

“Herreiro did, for he asked me to ride out
with him to-day, and I told him I was officer
of the guard until eight o'clock at night. I
wondered somewhat when he asked me; for
I have noted a shade of coolness in his manner
lately.”

“Beware of him!” said Orozimbo; “he
means you no good. They had not been
hunting; no! not they; they had not so much
as uncoupled their bloodhounds. And neither
one nor other of them noticed, or seemed to see,
the Spanish books or the music which you left
the other day; or even your gun and bugle
horn. Had they been honest, they would have
naturally inquired about those things, which are
not to be found, you know, in every Indian's
cabin.”

“He can mean me no evil,” said Hernando,
thoughtfully; “he never had a cause—”

“He has one now!” answered Orozimbo,
quickly.

“He has a cause now? a cause to mean me
ill? How so—what cause?”

“Guarica.”

“Guarica? how? a cause to injure me!
Guarica?”

“Yes! yes! Guarica; for he loves her.”

“Loves her? Why he has never seen her
but for an hour to-day—and do you say he
loves her?”

“Aye!” said the boy, drily, “loves her, as
much as you Spanish ever love Indian maidens.
He lusts after her young beauty—”

“Hold, Orozimbo!” said De Leon, looking
him steadily and sternly in the face, “was
that meant to me?”

“Perhaps!” answered the youth, gloomily,
“perhaps! and yet no! no! I believe thou art
honest, De Leon. Yet I doubt, sometimes,
even thee.”

“Mark me, Orozimbo,” replied Hernando,

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leaning from his tall charger, and pressing the
naked shoulder of the Charib heavily with his
right hand, “mark me. For myself, I care
not for your suspicions; but if I deemed that
your rash tongue dared syllable one doubt of
Guarica's purity—that your brain had surmised,
even for a second's space, that she
would listen to a dishonorable suit—her brother
though you be—”

“What then, her brother though I be, what
then?” cried Orozimbo, under strong excitement.

“I would strike you to my feet!” the young
Spaniard answered, gravely, “to my feet! for calumniating,
in your sister, one of God's angels!”

“You would do well!” cried the boy, grasping
his hand; “I should deserve it! But I
doubt neither of you—least of all her! But
when I think of the wrongs you Spaniards
have done to us—of our hearths defiled, our
names disgraced, our wives and sisters torn
from our bosoms, wooed and caressed and
courted until your passions or your whims are
satisfied, and then sent back dishonored and
undone to be a blot upon the homes they once
adorned—when I think on those things, Hernando
de Leon, my soul grows black within
me, and I doubt all things! and I tell you—
you who love her—I marked you Guzman's
dark and snakelike eye dwell on Guarica's form,
as never man's eye dwelt on maiden whom he
hoped not to dishonor, whom he lusted not to
destroy. I tell you he gloated on every heave
of her swelling bosom, on every undulation of
her limbs—not a movement, not a turn of her
figure could escape him. By the God whom I
worship, my soul burned to slay him where he
sat. Let him come here again, and a shaft
from this bow that never misses, shall drown
the flames of his accursed lust in his black
heart's blood!”

“Nay! nay, my friend, and soon to be my
brother, be not rash, Orozimbo. I trust thou
art too hasty I trust that, in this at least, thou
art too suspicious. But if it were so, if it were
as thou thinkest, dost imagine that I—I, Hernando
de Leon—would leave to any other man
alive, were that other the Cid Ruy Diaz of Bivar,
the right of avenging a wrong offered to
my promised wife—the privilege of shedding
his life blood that dared but to look on her too
warmly? No! no! believe me, Orozimbo, if
it be so, he dies upon this blade which twice
has beaten death back from the gates of his existence!
But not a word of this—not a word, on
thy life, to Guarica! I will myself speak
with Don Guzman, when I return to-morrow.
I think he will not dare, even if he should
wish it, to show aught but respectful courtesy
to my promised bride.”

“It shall be done as you wish, Hernando,”
answered the youth, “but beware of him. Certain
am I, that he is no true man, or honest
friend; and for the rest, he knows even now,
as well as I do, that you daily visit Guarica;
though it may be he fancies her your paramour,
and not your destined wife. But, as I said, beware
of him, and let him beware of me; for as
surely as there is a God, who witnesses our
thoughts, as clearly as our actions, so surely
will I shoot him, like a dog, if I catch him
lurking about her. And now go on your way
to Guarica—she waits for you.”

“And you, Orozimbo?”

“I will pursue these men until I house them
fairly, that I may learn to a foot the path in
which they travel; for by that same path will
they return again.”

“No violence, my friend, promise me that
there shall be no violence.”

“I do,” replied the Charib, laying his tawny
hand on his bare bosom; “I do promise you.
Why should I harm them until I am certain?
I am not quite so mad as that, Senor Hernando.”

“Then go—it is as well thou shouldst—and
keep good watch; for I am ordered hence with
a detachment to the new fortress eastward, and
shall be absent seven days, or perhaps longer.
Watch over her while I am gone; for if he
dare attempt aught, it will be then—though I
think it not of him.”

“Ordered hence—ha! ordered away!” cried
the boy; “when was that? When did you
hear of that? Are you sure he had naught to
do with it?”

“The order was conveyed to me this morning
from my superiors. Don Guzman had no
voice in it, save as one of the council; besides
it is a high and honorable post! Farewell,
and be thou prudent; ere I set forth I will seek
occasion to hold converse with him. Good
night, and fare thee well, if thou return not to
the cottage ere I leave it.”

And shaking hands kindly with the young
and gallant Indian, he cantered forward, full of
high hopes and tender dreams, to join his beautiful
Guarica; while, with the patient and doglike
sagacity of his race, her brother set himself
to track out inch by inch, the route of those
strangers, from whose visit his suspicions
feared so much of evil.

But though Hernando, partly from a reluctance
to admit himself the possibility of such a
surmise, and still more from a prudent apprehension
of wakening the fiery soul of the Charib
boy to some deed of signal vengeance, the
consequence of which might be to cause a war
of extermination between the races; but though
Hernando had expressed his confidence so
strongly in the good faith of Herreiro, that confidence,
as he rode onward in deep self-communion,
began to wane; and if not quite extinguished,
was much weakened before he reached
the dwelling of his lady love, and in her
witching smile forgot all thought of peril.

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