"No, indeed!" cried Francisco, with a sigh; "I have, as the old story-book goes, so often cried out _wolf!_ that perhaps you will not believe me now when it is true: but I bring you all sad news, and with a heavy heart I bring it. To you, my cousin, especially," he continued, speaking to Garcias' wife, who sat beside her husband, with her elbow leaning on his knee--"I know not well how to tell you what I have got to relate; but I came off in speed this morning, to see what we could all do to mend a bad business. Your brother Fernandez is now in prison at Lerida, and I am afraid that worse may come of it." "In prison! Why? How? What for?" exclaimed Garcias, starting up; "he shall not be in prison long!" "I fear me he will," replied the other, shaking his head,--"I fear me he will, if ever he come out of it. You all know the dreadful state of our province of Catalonia since that tyrant villain the count-duke has filled it with the most lawless and undisciplined soldiers in Spain. For the last three months our minds have been worked up to a pitch of desperation which every day threatened to plunge us into anarchy and revolt; wrong upon wrong, exaction after exaction, oppression outdoing oppression----" "But Fernandez--what of him?" cried Garcias. "Speak of him, Francisco. We well know what you have endured." "Well, then, all I can tell you of him is this," proceeded the Catalonian, apparently not well pleased at having been interrupted in the fine oration he was making: "as far as I could hear, for I was not present, he interfered to prevent one of the base soldados from maltreating a woman in the street. The soldier struck him. Fernandez is not a man to bear a blow, and he plunged his knife some six inches into his body. He was immediately arrested, disarmed, and carried to the castle. If the soldier dies, he will, they say, be shot off from one of the cannons' mouths; if he recovers, the galleys are to be Fernandez's doom for life." The wife of the smuggler had listened to this account of her brother's situation without proffering a word either of inquiry or remark; but I saw her cheek, like a withering rose, growing paler and paler as the incautious narrator proceeded, till at length, as he mentioned the horrible fate likely to befall the hero of his tale, she fell back upon the turf totally insensible.