"Enough, señor," replied the other, waving his hand with great dignity of manner, while a savage gleam shot over his stealthy eyes; "but allow me to inform you that a bandit--I do not mean a pitiful picaro who steals purses and pocket-handkerchiefs on the prado, or a swindling raterillo who cheats at cards, but an armed robber (and here his hand struck the butt of his escopeta)--is a modern Spanish hero, and the pretty paisana and the bluff muleteer sing of his exploits in the same breath with those of Rodrigo de Bivar, the Cid Campeador, Hernando de Cordova, and the chiefs of the war of Independence, when we saw the fields of Vimiero, of Talavera and Rorica; lend a new lustre to the names of Mina, of Murillo, and of Wellington!" "Very likely; but this Don Fabrique commits such devilish atrocities, and all that sort of thing," urged Jack, closing with his incessant phrase. "Do you know why poor Fabrique took his gun and stiletto, and went to the mountains?" "Shall I tell you?" "If you please." "Listen. There was an abogado, a lawyer of Jaen, named Jacop el Escribano, who married the aunt of Fabrique--an aunt who had been a mother to him after his own died, or rather was murdered by the Chapelgorri's. She tended him, reared him, loved and educated him at Alcala, and he was to be her heir, for she was rich, and had mines of quicksilver and cinnabar on the confines of Murcia; and her heir he had every right to be, for other kindred she had none. Well, this good aunt fell sick; those who were more than usually acute, or more than usually evil-minded, said that the abogado had poisoned her mentally and bodily. At all events he wrote out her will, which bequeathed all her property to himself, whom failing, to a certain Gil Jacop, his son by a former marriage, and to poor Fabrique, the son of her dead brother, not a peseta, not a pistareen! This limb of Satan and the law, succeeding in all his ends and objects, poisoned her ears against the poor student of Alcala. Well, the aunt died. Full of sorrow Fabrique hastened to his home to find the door of it shut in his face, and the malicious abogado in possession of everything, even to his aunt's snuff-box and armed chair. Our poor student rushed to the Alcalde, who heard him with a smile of incredulity--why? because he was the cousin of the abogado, and he, too, shut his door in the face of Fabrique. Bursting with indignation he sought the corregidor, to pour out anew the story of his wrongs; but, ay de mi! the corregidor, a Commander of the Knights of Calatrava, was to dine that day with the abogado, who had invited half the city to feast, and weekly gave a magnificent tertulia in the house of the dead woman.