"Art thou Juan Lerma? and art thou truly alive? or do I look upon thy phantom?" cried the hunchback, with an agitated voice. "Out, fool! we are good living men," exclaimed the red-bearded man, angrily; "and with flesh enough upon our bones, to cudgel thee into better manners, I trow. Is this the way you receive old friends, returning from bondage among infidels? What, Bernal Diaz, thou ass! dost thou not know Gaspar Olea, thine old townsman of Medina-del-Campo, thy brother-in-arms and sworn friend? nor yet the senor Don Juan Lerma, my captain and friend in trouble? nor Ocelotzin, the old Ottomi rascal, our guide here?" "Ay, oho! old rascal, old friend; all friends, all rascals," cried the Indian, looking affectionately towards the Castilians, who still stood in doubt, and using the few Spanish words with which he was familiar; "good friends, good rascals,--Castellanos, Cristianos;--friends, rascals." While the rest were hesitating, the cavalier Don Francisco de Guzman suddenly stepped out from among them, and, advancing towards the young man Lerma, with a smiling countenance and extended hand, said, "Though I am not thought to be the most loving of thy friends, I will be the first to bid thee welcome, senor Lerma, in token that old feuds do not mar the satisfaction with which I behold a Christian man rescued so happily, and as it appears to me, so marvellously, from the grave." The emotions and changes of countenance with which the young man heard these words, were various and strongly marked. At the first tones of Guzman, he started back, as if a serpent had suddenly crossed his path, and grew pale, while his eyes flashed a ferocious and deadly fire. At the next, the blood rushed over his visage, and throbbed with a visible violence in the vessels of his temples; while he half raised the macana, which he carried, in lieu of a better weapon, as if to cleave the speaker to the earth. The next instant, the angry suffusion departed, his brows relaxed their severity, the deep melancholy gathered again in his eyes, and he surveyed the cavalier with a patient and grave placidity, until the latter had finished his salutation. Then, bending his head, and folding his hands upon his breast, he replied, mildly, and without a shadow of anger, "I have, as thou sayest, returned from the grave, in the sight of which I strove, as a Christian should, to make my peace with man as well as with heaven. I have done so; I am at peace with all; I am at peace with _thee_--But I cannot give thee my hand." The cavalier Don Francisco received this rejection of his good-will with no sign of dissatisfaction, that was distinguishable by others, beyond a smile or sneer; but inclining his head towards Lerma, he muttered in his ear-- "The strife is unequal; but I accept thy defiance. Thou art but a broken-legged wolf, and wilt fight a fatted tiger--I am content."