"In that case make haste, sir," the stranger replied, as he stopped, "for I am greatly pressed for time, I assure you." "Oh! You will certainly grant me a few minutes," the adventurer remarked, with the old sarcasm. "As you desire it so eagerly, I will not refuse it you, sir. But I really am in a hurry." "I have no doubt on that point, sir; more especially hurried to leave this house--is it not so?" "What do you mean, sir?" the stranger asked, haughtily. "I mean," the adventurer replied, as he rose and placed himself between the stranger and the door, "that it is useless to feign any longer, and that you are recognized." "I recognized? I do not understand you. What does this language mean?" "It means," Montbarts said brutally, "that you are a spy and a traitor, and that you will be hanged within ten minutes." "I?" the stranger replied, with very cleverly assumed surprise; "Why, you must be mad, sir, or suffering under a strange mistake. Let me pass, I request." "I am not mad or mistaken, Señor Don Antonio de la Ronda." The stranger started, a livid pallor covered his face, but he immediately recovered himself. "Why, this is madness!" he said. "Sir," Montbarts remarked, still calm, but remaining in front of the door, "when I affirm, you deny. It is evident that one of us lies, or is mistaken. Now I declare that it is not I, hence it must be you; and to remove your last doubts on this point, listen to this, but first be good enough to resume your seat. We shall have, however much it may annoy you, to converse for some time and I will remark, that it is a very bad taste to talk standing face to face like two gamecocks ready to fly at each other's combs, when it is possible to act otherwise." Mastered, in spite of himself, by the adventurer's flashing glance obstinately fixed on him, and by his sharp, imperative accent, the stranger returned to his seat, and fell into it rather than sat down. "Now, sir," the filibuster continued, in the same calm voice, as he reseated himself and placed his elbows on the table, "in order at once to dissipate all the doubts you may have, and to prove to you that I know more about you than you will doubtless like, let me tell you your history in a couple of words." "Sir!" the stranger interrupted. "Oh, fear nothing," he added, with studied sarcasm, "I shall be brief: I no more like than you do to waste my time in idle discourses; but just notice, by the bye, that, as I prophesied, our conversation, at first frivolous, has suddenly grown interesting. Is not this singular, I ask you?" "I am awaiting your explanation, sir," the stranger replied, coolly; "for, up to the present, whatever you may say, I do not comprehend a word of all that it pleases you to say to me." "By Heavens! You are a man after my heart. I was not mistaken about you. Brave, cold, and crafty, you are worthy to be a filibuster, and to lead an adventurous life with us."