"You are," he cried, "yes, _you_ are the Chaparrito!--No?--Yes! Ha, I've struck, I've struck!" He had indeed. The colossal guile and intellect and will, the giant whom men in awe called El Chaparrito, was only old, withered Anastasio Murguia. But the astute Juarez _knew_ that he was right. He knew it in that one look of consuming, conquering hate. He knew the giant in that hate. The feeble flesh, Anastasio Murguia, was an incident. Yet even so, only the President's tenacity held him to where his instinct had leapt. For under discovery Murguia was changed to a huddled, abject creature, stammering denial. Yet it must be true, it must. The strangest, the most weird of contrasts in the same soul and body--yet it must, it _was_ true! And Murguia? He might have asked for reward, and had it. But his was rankest despair. His work was not finished, his goal not attained. And now his most potent instrument of all, the Chaparrito, was miserably identified in his own self, was taken from him. Juarez rose and touched his shoulder, "Come," he said, "there's much too much tension here. Now then, sit down, so. Let me see, you said your name was--yes, Murguia. But--why, Dios mio, that's the Huasteca miser! Well, well, well, and so you are that rich old hacendado who never gave even a fanega of corn to Republic or French either, unless frightened into it? But hombre, we've had _big_ sums from the Chaparrito, and all unasked!" And yet must it still be true, yet must even this contrast accord. El Chaparrito had indeed given munificently. But in each case it was to bridge a crisis. As the shrewdest general he knew a vital campaign, and aided, if need be. But on a useless one the Republic's soldiers might starve, might freeze, might bleed and die, without ever the most niggardly solace ever reaching them from El Chaparrito. Economy was applied to vengeance, and made it unspeakably grim. "Once though," Juarez pursued, "you all but lost your Maximilian? I mean last fall when he started for the coast. He could have escaped to Europe." "I know," said Murguia quietly, "but I was near him. If he had not turned back, I would have done it myself." "It?" "The justice which Your Excellency has just postponed three days." "Dios mio, but our Chaparrito is a dangerous person! He'd have to be locked up if Maximilian were pardoned." "But--but Your Excellency will not pardon him!" "To be sure, I had forgotten. I am to be given a memory. Well?" "Your Excellency remembers, he remembers Zacatecas?" "Last February? Certainly I do. Miramon came, but a warning from El Chaparrito, from you, came first, and a last time I escaped. As it was, I was reported captured, and I sometimes wonder what Maximilian would have done had that report been true." "If I should tell you, senor?" "Ah, that is beyond even you, since Maximilian has never had the chance to decide my fate."