The outlaw, recovering from his violent fall, hurried for the water. Velasque was far on the lake. The old man hastened along the shore to meet his daughter on the upper extremity of the lake. He found her in a branch-vaulted glen, concealed under an arbor that Clermont had constructed for their stolen interviews; scarcely did he begin to tranquillize his child, now fluttering with fear, and exhausted by her efforts, when Velasque leaped down the side of the glen. They stood face to face--the outlaw and the exasperated lover. ‘Obstinate old man,’ said the latter, ‘thou shalt die, and thy defenseless daughter shall be subdued to my wishes, if thou wilt not now acknowledge her mine.’ The old man replied not. Almirena, deadly pale, staggered forward to her father, and extending up to him her clasped hands, groaned out, ‘Oh my father, let me be honorably his.’ Nature failed her--she fell lifeless at his feet. Velasque stooped forward to raise her. But the maddened old man, with unnatural nerve, ran upon him, and precipitated him down a chasm in the rocks. The officers, who had been on the alert in the woods, now came up. They bore the unconscious form of Almirena to the lodge, and consigned it to the care of her tender hearted slave. The wounded Velasque was carried away on a litter. The outlaw was manacled. He was supposed to be a bloody-handed, ferocious pirate. And as the girl was thought to be an accomplice in her father’s guilt, the officers had little pity for either. They did not permit the old man to go to his house and take a last look of his child; but conveying him by a nearer way through the valley of the lake, on the next morning they reached the sea-port, and lodged the outlaw in prison, where he was to be confined until Velasque should be sufficiently recovered to take charge of him to Mexico. Herraras was not sorry that his daughter had died. He knew that his own fate was sealed, and that she should live, exposed to the violence of Velasque, would have been worse than death on the rack to himself. He settled down in a calm, sullen submission to his destiny. But Almirena lived. She had fainted; but awoke in a delirium. Clermont did not come to the lodge till the following morning. She wildly addressed him as he entered, ‘Farewell, Elfred, farewell. I have given myself to Velasque, and he spares my father’s life. You would see me before I go. Farewell. One kiss, one more;’ and she threw her arms about his neck, as he leaned over her, and sobbed like a child. For weeks did her lover watch in patient agony by her side. At length she slowly recovered.