As on the previous day, the count and the adventurer rode side by side, absorbed in gloomy thoughts, and looking round them absently and carelessly. At length the Canadian drew himself up, shook his head several times as if to dismiss a troublesome thought, and turning to the count said, as if he were completing aloud an internal thought-- "Stuff, a little sooner or a little later, a man must die after all." "Yes," the count said with a sad smile, "dying is indeed the common law. But dying thus, far from one's friends, beneath the bullets of unworthy foes, without benefit to humanity--that is truly frightful, and what heaven ought not to permit." "Do not murmur against Providence, señor. These men have fallen, it is true; but their death was not so useless as you seem to think, because it enabled you to await the help which delivered you." "That is true, and I am wrong; still I cannot help pitying the fate of devoted servants, whose death I indirectly caused." "It was a glorious fight, vigorously carried on upon both sides. Still it was time for our liberators to arrive. Had they not, it is more than probable that we should now be also lying lifeless on the ground. But," he added, after a moment's reflection, "why did our saviours go off in that way? I fancy they might have joined us, if not to receive our congratulations and thanks, at least to inquire into our state." "What good would that do? The Queen of the Savannah heard our muskets, that was sufficient to prove to her that we were still alive and able to fight." "That is possible," the Canadian continued thoughtfully; "but however great may be the obligation I have contracted towards the extraordinary woman you call by that name, I shall not be satisfied till I shall have been close to her." "Why so? With what have you to reproach her? Why obstinately try to disturb the secrets of a person who must be an object of indifference to you?" "You are mistaken on that head, señor. This woman, this strange being, has already interfered twice in my affairs at a very short interval of time. A man like myself, señor, does not contract serious obligations, unless he knows that he will be able someday to repay to the person who forces such protection upon him." The count burst into a laugh. "Caballero, caballero," he said, "you are punctilious, and difficult to satisfy. Anyone in your place would readily put up with the affront, and not be at all anxious to know to whom he owes so great an obligation." "Everybody, señor, looks at matters from his own point of sight; for my part I repeat that the way in which the woman to whom we are alluding has twice interfered in my affairs has excited in me, I will not say a curiosity, but such a lively interest, that I swear to you I mean to learn something about her at all risks so soon as I am at liberty again." "Take my advice, Don Oliver, do not try to discover the matter, for there is a sad story beneath it." "You know her, then?"