"You shall be well rewarded for all you have suffered in serving me," said Don Suero, holding out his hand to Bellido. "I promised you three hundred gold marks if the Vengador and his band were destroyed, and I shall pay you the full amount. If they were not all killed by the falling of the arched roof, it was my fault, and not yours. But, as you know more of the constitution of the band than I do, think you that the Vengador will be able to get together again a band such as that which he has now lost?"
"I swear to you that he will not be able to do so, nor even keep with him the men that he now has," answered Bellido, in so confident a tone of voice that the count was agreeably surprised.
"And who will conquer him, when the brotherhood of the Salvadores, in whom all the grandees of the country have such confidence, has not succeeded, and probably will never succeed, in suppressing the bandits?"
"I alone."
"You?"
"Yes. Do you think that Bellido Dolfos will be discouraged because he stumbles at the beginning of a journey? Do you believe that it is the gold from your coffers that urges him to make short work of the Vengador and his band? If you so think, and so believe, you know me but little, count. In souls like mine there is no place for discouragement, nor for the forgetting of insults. The Vengador and Rui-Venablos dared to call me traitor and to point their daggers at my breast. I would lose a hundred lives rather than relinquish the chastisement of such audacity."
"You are wounded and weak from loss of blood. It will be some time before you can attack the Vengador; meanwhile, he will have time to reorganise his band."
"The wound which I have received will favour my projects."
"I do not understand you, Bellido."