"Will you have my brother Najara diving in upon you? Pho, you talk too loud: 'tis well you were gabbling in Mexican. Hark ye, Olin, you knave, get you gone! to your den, sirrah!--Pray, senor Juan, tell this rascal, in his own gibberish, that he cannot remain a moment longer from his lock-up, without being discovered.--Come, fellow, come: you shall have more talk to-morrow." So saying, the Alguazil conducted the Mexican away. A few moments after, he returned alone. Juan, still disordered and brooding over his wrongs, paced to and fro over the narrow limits of his cell. His agitation Increased with each step, and, at last, finding that Villafana did not speak, he exclaimed, "Come, Villafana,--I know what thou wilt say,--am I not used dog-like? He disdained even to sit upon the trial, to ask me what I had to urge in excuse of my folly; but left this to judges, who were content to ask 'Didst thou this?' and 'Didst thou that?' without permitting me a word of defence. Surely, I had much provocation in the matter of Guzman; and as for the decree, it should have been remembered, that I was come into the camp too short a time to have made it as fast in my mind as others, who had heard it daily proclaimed for months. I must die for this!--die like a hunted assassin!--my hand stuck against the prison-door, my body given, perhaps, to fatten the lean hogs that will fatten my judges! Oh, by heaven, this is intolerable to think on!" "Thou wilt believe, now, that thou wert sent to the South Sea for no good?" "Ay, I will believe anything," said Juan, in increasing excitement. "And _this_ too! scarce an hour returned from my sufferings, endured for him,--endured to regain his good-will! Ay, and before I had done speaking, he would have sent me to Mexico, to be sacrificed there!--before I had eaten and drunk! before I had rested my wearied body, before I had recruited my exhausted strength!--Tell me, Villafana! was it not by his design I was entrapped into giving shelter to--But, no! that could not be; in that, at least, he must be innocent. But, in the rest, it is oppression, grinding, intolerable oppression!" "Well, I marvel he did not let thee off with a scourging," said Villafana, swallowing another draught from the neglected flask. "Come, drink, and we will discourse together." "A scourging!" said Juan, seizing the Alguazil's arm with a grasp which showed that imprisonment and sorrow had not altogether robbed him of strength; "dare you talk to me of scourging?" "Ay, marry," said Villafana, whose object seemed to be to excite the slumbering fury of the young man, and who now, in the effect of a word used for another purpose, discovered a point on which his equanimity was not impregnable; "ay, faith; for the whole army cries out upon his barbarity, saying that he is murdering you; so that he already talks of letting you off with a scourging.--He was as good with me."