at the window, which flew in a thousand fragments around them, and entered the salon.
And it was time for them to arrive. Don Tadeo, with a stool, had split the head of one of the bandits, who lay lifeless upon the floor; but the other had got him down, and, with his knee upon his breast, was on the point of stabbing him. With a pistol shot, one of the unknown blew out his brains, and the wretch rolled in his agony close to his dead companion. Don Tadeo sprang up quickly, exclaiming —
"By the Virgin! I thought my hour was come!" Then, turning towards the masked men, he said – "Thanks, caballeros! thanks for your very timely succour! One minute more, and it would have been all over with me! The Linda is expeditious!"
The courtesan, with features contracted by rage, and clenched teeth, looked on without appearing to see, overwhelmed, confounded by the scene which had so rapidly taken place, and which had, in a few minutes, ravished from her the vengeance which she thought had this time been so certain.
"Without bearing malice, madam," said Don Tadeo in a jeering tone, "this is a match deferred. Your fertile imagination will no doubt soon furnish you with the means of taking your revenge!"
"I hope so," she said with a sardonic smile.
"Seize this woman," the leader of the unknown commanded; "gag her, and bind her securely to the bed."
"Bind me!" she cried in a paroxysm of anger; "me! do you know who I am?"
"Perfectly well, madam," the stranger replied drily. "You are a woman for whom honourable people have no name. Libertines have given you that of the Linda, and your present lover is General Bustamente. You see, madam, that we are not unacquainted with you."
"Beware, sir," she hissed; "I am not to be insulted with impunity."
"We do not insult you, madam; we only wish, for a time, to put it out of your power to do mischief. In a few days," he continued, in a quiet, firm tone, "we will determine what shall be done with you."
"Done with me! – me! – who then are you, with faces you dare not reveal, and who presume to speak to me thus?"
"Who we are, – learn! – We are the Dark-Hearts!" At this terrible announcement, a convulsive trembling shook the limbs of the woman, who, retreating to the wall, a prey to intense terror, exclaimed in a faint voice; "My God! my God! I am lost," and sank down fainting.
At a sign from the leader, one of his companions bound her securely, and after gagging her, fastened her to the foot of the bed. Then, taking Don Tadeo with them, they departed by the same way they had entered, without taking any heed of the two assassins lying upon the floor. Before he left the room, the chief pinned a piece of parchment to a table with a dagger. Upon this parchment were written a few words of terrible import: —
"The traitor Pancho Bustamente is cited at the expiration of ninety-three days!"
CHAPTER IX
IN THE STREET
As soon as they were outside of the house, the masked men, at a sign from the leader, dispersed in various directions. When they had disappeared round the corners of the neighbouring streets, the chief turned towards Don Tadeo, who, scarce recovered from the trying emotions he had successively gone through, and weakened by the blood he had lost, as well as by the prodigious efforts his last struggle had cost him, was leaning, half fainting against the wall of the house he had been so fortunately enabled to quit. A flood of bitter reflections rushed upon his brain; the incidents of that terrible night almost unsettled his reason: in vain he tried to recover the train of his ideas which had been so often and so violently broken. The stranger looked at him for a few minutes with profound attention; then approaching him, he laid his hand quietly upon his shoulder. At this sudden touch, the gentleman started as if he had received an electric shock.
"What!" the unknown said in a tone of reproach, "scarcely entered on the good fight, and you despair already, Don Tadeo?"
The wounded man shook his head.
"You, Don Tadeo, whose lofty brow has never bent before revolutionary storms; you, who in the most trying circumstances have always remained firm, are now pale and cast down, without faith in the present, or hope in the future, and have lost strength and courage through the vain threats of a woman!"
"That woman," he replied mournfully, "has always been my evil genius. She is a demon!"
"And suppose," the unknown exclaimed energetically, "that this woman should succeed in getting up another of the infamous schemes in which her brain is so fertile, a man of heart takes courage in a struggle? Forget these impotent hatreds that can never reach you; remember what you are; look boldly at the glorious mission which is imposed upon you."
"What do you mean?"
"Do you not understand me? Can you believe that God, who has this night allowed you so miraculously to escape death, has not great designs in store for you? Brother," he added, in a tone of authority, "the existence that has been restored to you is not your own, it belongs to your country!"
A moment of silence followed this appeal, during which Don Tadeo appeared a prey to profound despair. At length, looking at the unknown, he said with bitter despondency —
"What is to be done? Heaven is my witness that my only desire, my sole happiness, would be to see my country free. But during the twenty years we have been struggling we have done nothing, alas! but pass from one tyranny to another, each time riveting afresh the chains which bind us. No! Heaven itself seems to forbid our contending longer against an implacable destiny. You know well from experience that citizens cannot be improvised from slaves. Servitude destroys moral virtue, abases the soul, and degrades the heart. Many generations must pass away before the inhabitants of this unfortunate country will be fit to form a people!"
"By what right do you presume to fathom the designs of Providence?" the unknown replied, in an imposing tone of voice. "Do you know what is reserved for you? Who tells you that the passing triumph of our oppressors is not granted by God, in His boundless wisdom, in order to render their future fall more terrible?"
Don Tadeo, restored to himself by the manly words of his disguised friend, drew himself up proudly, and looked attentively at the speaker.
"And who are you," he said, "whose sympathetic voice has stirred the most secret fibres of my heart? Who authorizes you to speak thus? Answer! Who are you?"
"Of what importance is it who I am," the unknown remarked, calmly, "if I succeed in persuading you that all is far from being lost – that the liberty which you believe for ever destroyed has never been so near triumphing, and that it only perhaps requires one sublime effort to recover it!"
"But still?" the wounded man said, persistently.
"I am he who, a few minutes ago, saved your life. That ought to suffice."
"Not so," Don Tadeo said, warmly, "for you conceal your features under a mask, and the very circumstance you named gives me a right to see them."
"Perhaps it does," the unknown said, slowly removing his mask, and revealing to Don Tadeo, in the pale beams of the moon, a countenance with manly, marked features, and wearing a frank and loyal expression.
"Oh! my heart did not deceive me!" Tadeo cried – "Don Gregorio Peralta!"
"Yes, it is I, Don Tadeo!" the young man, he was scarcely thirty, replied – "and cannot comprehend the depression of the man whom the avengers
