Ever and anon the robbers paused and turned to look or to listen, as if, like deer, they scented the hunter. Ha! have they not caught sight of him now, as, while resting his chest on the sod, he has incautiously raised his head a little to gain a clearer view of their retreating forms? The three men have stopped at the skirt of a wood; one, the landlord, retraces his steps; the carbine of the bandit seems to be pointed towards the spot where lies the pursuer. The heart of Lucius throbs fast; tightly he grasps his pistol, his sole defence,—his finger is on the trigger! Shall he fire at the nearest man, then spring from the earth and trust to his speed, and the chance that the robber's bullet may miss its mark? The landlord approaches nearer, glancing cautiously from right to left on the ground; he is now so near that Lucius half closes his eyes, lest their glitter in the moonlight should betray his lurking-place behind the small bush, whose shadow affords so poor a screen! Within a few yards of Lucius the Spaniard stoops and picks up some object, it might be a purse or a cigar-case, that he had dropped on the ground. Then he turns round, and, to the great relief of his hidden pursuer, strides back to rejoin his companions. Then the three, with their mule, enter the covert of the wood, whose dark mass of shade lies before them.
Lucius now feared that, unless he should lessen the distance between himself and the robbers, he might, from the intricacies of the wood, lose trace of them altogether. The Englishman therefore rose, and for a time exchanging cautious advance for rapidity of motion, made his way quickly towards the place where the figures of the Spaniards had disappeared in the shadow of the trees. Chico and his comrades had hitherto moved forward in silence; or if they conversed together, it had been in tones too low to reach their pursuer. But the silence was soon to be fearfully broken. Just as Lucius had gained the edge of the wood, a fearful cry, as of one in mortal agony or terror, suddenly thrilled on his ear. The shriek of "Murder!" the cry for help, was repeated again and again, and then came the sharp report of a carbine. There was evidently a death-struggle going on in the wood.
Lucius could not hear that cry and stand still. He could not coldly calculate on the probability that crime was only meeting its due reward, nor reflect that when thieves fall out and slay one another, honest men may be gainers. Obeying the generous impulse of his heart, the young Englishman plunged through the crackling brushwood, shouting loudly as he did so to give notice that help was at hand, and for the same purpose firing off the pistol which he held in his grasp. The latter act was perhaps one of imprudence; yet rash daring oftentimes commands more success than calculating caution. The report of fire-arms, the loud crackling of underwood over which Lucius was forcing his way, his shouts which rang through the wood, alarmed the murderers into the belief that a body of alguazils was upon them. The cries suddenly ceased, and were followed by sounds as of men in flight, pushing through bushes and brambles to make their escape from pursuers. When Lucius came up to the spot which had been the scene of a terrible struggle, he only found a dead mule lying on the blood-stained turf, and a dying man beside it.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
WANDERINGS.
A priest!—for the love of the Virgin, bring a priest!" groaned forth the wretched Chico, for it was he who had fallen under the murderer's steel. Lucius knelt beside him, and raised the head of Chico. Ghastly looked his face in the moonlight, which streamed upon it from an opening between the trees; the stamp of death already was there, seen in the livid hue and the glazing eye. The betrayer had been betrayed, the robber had been robbed, the false servant had been murdered for the sake of the gold to obtain which he had bartered his soul. Yet superstition still retained some hold on the dying wretch. Though his dull ear could not take in the words of Holy Writ uttered by Lucius in the faint hope that even at the last moment the sinner might find grace, Chico's dying breath was expended in calling for a priest to save him from the worst penalty of his crimes! But conscience was not to be soothed by fatal opiates in the moment of spirit and body's parting; Chico was not to be given that false comfort which has deluded so many at the solemn hour of death. Without a priest near him to hear confession or pronounce absolution, the soul of the murdered man passed forth to its dread account.
Chico was dead,—no one could look on the face of the corpse and doubt that all was over. Lucius gently laid down on the turf the head that he had been supporting, and spread Chico's mantle over his mangled body. The Englishman then rose from his knees, and went up to the mule, which lay stiff and dead. Lucius could but conjecture that, in the struggle between Chico and those who had slain him, the robber's carbine might accidentally have been discharged and have killed the beast of burden, as it seemed to have but one wound, and that from a bullet. Lucius, with a strange sensation, as if he were robbing the dead, examined the load which was still on the back of the mule. He removed the sacking in which it was wrapped, and then, even by the uncertain light of the moon, easily recognized the treasure-box, with its hinges and bands of metal, by the description of it which he had received from Inez.