"Good! Speak, nobody will disturb you; we have all the time necessary before us." "Oh, what I have to say to you will not take long; I only wish to ask you to lay a final hand to a work for which you have already striven?" "What is it?" "I wish to claim your help in the war of Texas against Mexico." The young hunter frowned, and for some minutes remained silent. "Will you refuse?" Tranquil asked, anxiously. Loyal Heart shook his head. "No," he said; "I merely feel a repugnance to mingle again with white men, and--shall I confess it? to fight against my countrymen." "Your countrymen?" "Yes, I am a Mexican, a native of Sonora." "Oh!" the hunter said with an air of disappointment. "Listen to me," Loyal Heart said, resolutely, "after all, it is better I should speak frankly to you; when you have heard me, you will judge and tell me what I ought to do." "Good! Speak, my friend." "You have, I think, been several times surprised at seeing a white man, like myself, dwelling with his mother and an old servant among an Indian tribe; you have asked yourself what reason could be powerful enough, or what crime was sufficiently great, to compel a man like myself, of gentle manners, gifted with a pleasant exterior, and possessing some degree of education, to seek a refuge among savages? This appeared to you extraordinary. Well, my friend, the cause of my exile to these remote regions was a crime I committed: on the self-same day I became an incendiary and an assassin." "Oh!" Tranquil exclaimed, while the other hearers gave an incredulous glance; "you an incendiary and assassin, Loyal Heart! it is simply impossible." "I was not Loyal Heart then," the hunter continued with a melancholy smile; "but it is true that I was only a lad, just fourteen years of age. My father was a Spaniard of the old race, with whom honour was a sacred inheritance, which he ever kept intact. He succeeded in saving me from the hands of the Juez de Letras, who had come to arrest me; and when the magistrate had left the house, my father assembled his tenants, formed a court, of which he constituted himself president, and tried me. My crime was evident, the proofs overwhelming, and my father himself uttered my sentence in a firm voice: I was condemned to death." "To death?" his hearers exclaimed, with a start of horror.