"If Don Carlos lied, and you still refuse to renounce the senorita after you have been flogged and put to the torture, then I will set her free and you also," Cojuelo said grimly. "That is a promise, and Cojuelo never breaks a promise. Meanwhile I say again that you are lying, and that Don Carlos told the Senorita Rostrevor the truth." "Here, I say, Cojuelo, cut out this bluff about torture and all that sort of nonsense," exclaimed Standish, with just a suspicion of unsteadiness in his voice. "I tell you I am prepared to pay any sum within reason as a ransom, and you won't get any more by threatening me with physical violence. Look here, I'm willing to apologise for having tried to shoot you, but you know you exasperated me by taunting me about not valuing Miss Rostrevor." "What a charming piece of condescension on your part!" sneered Cojuelo. "If Don Carlos de Ruiz lied to the Senorita Rostrevor, I shall shoot him. That is another promise, senorita. As for you, perhaps the lash and the red hot iron on your flesh will induce you to speak truth as well as test your courage!" He turned to the door, outside which the man with the keys was standing. "Mendoza, order Perez, Riafio and Garcilaso to get ready the whipping post and make hot the branding irons at once," he commanded in Spanish, then repeated the order in English for the benefit of Standish, whose face went livid. "Oh, surely you won't be so fiendishly cruel!" burst out Myra passionately. "If you dare to harm Tony----" "We will withdraw, senorita, and leave Senor Standish to nerve himself for the ordeal that awaits him," interrupted Cojuelo, and hustled her out of the cell before she could say more. "I swear I did not lie to you, Myra," he resumed, as he clanged the door shut on the prisoner. "I am bluffing now, and have no intention of flogging or branding Standish, but only of scaring him into confessing that he is willing to give you to me to save himself." "And if he stands the test, if he refuses to give me up even when threatened with flogging and burning, you will keep your promise and set us both free?" asked Myra, after a breathless pause. "Yes, assuredly--and I shall also keep my promise to shoot Don Carlos," was the grim reply. "Look, is it not a picturesque scene?" he added, with a change of tone. The great cave, lighted by electricity, was certainly a remarkable sight, filled as it was with a picturesque crowd of men, some of them in what looked like stage costumes, nearly all chattering like excited children anticipating a treat as they watched some of their fellows erecting a whipping-post in the centre of the place, while another was busy working the bellows of what looked like a blacksmith's furnace and making irons red-hot. A scene a great artist might have loved to paint, yet the atmosphere was so sinister that Myra shivered involuntarily.