"Sebastianillo! You shall not harm him! You shall not——"
The door, falling a little short of the fire, had scattered some of the burning brands about the floor and fanned the rest into a blaze. In the light of it he faced round with a snarl, his teeth showing beneath his moustache. The light also showed—though Mercedes neither noted it nor could have read its signification—a corporal's chevron on his sleeve.
"Who the devil are you?" The snarl ended in a snap.
Mercedes stood swaying on the threshold, knife in hand.
"You shall not harm him!"
She spoke in her own tongue and he understood it, after a fashion; for he answered in broken Spanish, catching up her word—
"Harm? Who means any harm? When a man is perishing with hunger and folks will not open to him——"
He paused, wondering at her gaze. Travelling past him, it had fastened itself on the back wall of the hut, across the fire. "Hullo! What's the matter?" He swung round. "Good Lord!" said he, with a gulp.
He sprang past the fire and stooped over the old man's body, which lay face downward on the shelving heap of silver. It did not stir. By-and-by he took it by one of the rigid arms and turned it over, not roughly.
"Warm," said he: "warm, but dead as a herring! Come and see for yourself."