"Then there is no hope of my being able to pass you off as an ordinary prisoner, like my companion here, who is neither royalist nor insurgent." "It is very doubtful, to say the least," remarked Don Rafael, in a desponding tone. "Altogether impossible; but I can promise you one thing, however: that we shall not betray you, should we fall in with these pursuers. Moreover, I shall endeavour to throw them off your scent: for I am beginning to tire of this brigand life of theirs. On one condition, how ever." "Name it!" said the Colonel. "That you will permit us to part company with you. I can do nothing to save you--you know it--while you may only ruin us, without any profit to yourself. On the other hand your fate has become in a manner linked with ours; and to abandon you in the midst of danger would be a baseness for which I could never pardon myself." There was in the words of Zapote an accent of loyalty, which moved the Colonel to admiration, in spite of himself. "Have no care for me," resolutely rejoined Don Rafael. "Go which way you please without me; and I hope," he added with a smile, "that you will reach that nephew you speak of, and safely deliver to him his uncle's will!" "After all, _amigo_," he continued in a more serious tone, "I have but little reason to care for life more than yourself. A little sooner or a little later, what matters it? Only," added he, smiling, "I should not exactly fancy to be hanged." "Thanks for your permission that we should part from you," said Zapote; "but, Senor Cavallero, a word before you go. If you take my advice, you will climb back into that tree where no one will suspect your presence." "No," interrupted Don Rafael. "Up there I should be as a jaguar pursued by hounds--without the power to defend myself; and I am like the Indians, I wish, on entering the other world, to send as many enemies before me as possible." "Well, then, do better still--make towards the river; keep due south from this place; and, on reaching the banks of the Ostuta, you will see a vast thicket of bamboos--in which my comrade and myself have just found a refuge, and where we might have remained safe from enemies till the day of judgment, had we not to go forward upon our errand. If you can only succeed in reaching the bamboos, you are saved." Saying this El Zapote, followed by his companion, turned his face northward, and striking off into the thicket but were soon lost to Don Rafael's sight. CHAPTER SIXTY ONE. THE FUGITIVES IN DANGER. El Zapote and his confrere, the messenger, after making a wide detour through the forest, came out on the Huajapam road. Their intention was to journey on to Huajapam--where they supposed the royalist army still held the place in siege, and where they expected to find Colonel Tres-Villas, to whom the messenger had been sent. Little did either the ex-guerillero or his companion suspect that it was the colonel himself from whom they had just parted.