The man, rising in his stirrups, the reins in one hand and turning up the brim of his sombrero with the other, peered down at us over the pricked ears of his horse. I pointed over my head at the mouth of the cave, then down at Seraphina, lifting my hands to show that I was unarmed. I opened my lips wide. Surprise, agitation, weakness, had robbed me of every vestige of my voice. I beckoned downwards with a desperate energy, Horse and rider remained perfectly still, like an equestrian statue set up on the edge of a precipice. Sera-phina had never raised her head. The man’s intent scrutiny could not have mistaken me for a _Lugareno_. I think he gazed so long because he was amazed to discover down there a woman on her knees, stooping over a prostrate body, and a bareheaded man in a ragged white shirt and black breeches, reeling between the bushes and gesticulating violently, like an excited mute. But how a rope came to hang down from a tree, growing in a position so inaccessible that only a bird could have attached it there struck him as the most mysterious thing of all. He pointed his finger at it interrogatively, and I answered this inquiring sign by indicating the stony slope of the ravine. It seemed as if he could not speak for wonder. After a while he sat back in his saddle, gave me an encouraging wave of the hand, and wheeled his horse away from the brink. It was as if we had been casting a spell of extinction on each other’s voices. No sooner had he disappeared than I found mine. I do not suppose it was very loud but, at my aimless screech, Seraphina looked upwards on every side, saw no one anywhere, and remained on her knees with her eyes, full of apprehension, fixed upon me. “No! I am not mad, dearest,” I said. “There was a man. He has seen us.” “Oh, Juan!” she faltered out, “pray with me that God may have mercy on this poor wretch and let him die.” I said nothing. My thin, quavering scream after the peon had awakened Manuel from his delirious dream of an inferno. The voice that issued from his shattered body was awfully measured, hollow, and profound. “You live!” he uttered slowly, turning his eyes full upon my face, and, as if perceiving for the first time in me the appearance of a living man. “Ha! You English walk the earth unscathed.” A feeling of pity came to me--a pity distinct from the harrowing sensations of his miserable end. He had been evil in the obscurity of his life, as there are plants growing harmful and deadly in the shade, drawing poison from the dank soil on which they flourish. He was as unconscious of his evil as they--but he had a man’s right to my pity. “I am b--roken,” he stammered out. Seraphina kept on moistening his lips. “Repent, Manuel,” she entreated fervently. “We have forgiven thee the evil done to us. Repent of thy crimes--poor man.”