“So long ago, ah Dios! And thou wert gone; and the birds were silent; and under the heavy sky my father called me to him. He held a last letter of thine, which had missed my hands for his. Love, sick at our parting, had betrayed us. O, the letter! how I swooned to be denied it! He was for killing me, a traitor. Well, I could not help but be. But Tia Joachina had pity on me, and dressed me as you see, and smuggled me to the hills, that I might at least have a chance to live without suffering wrong. And, behold! the heavens smiled upon me, knowing my love; and Señor Cangrejo took me to herd his goats. For seven months—for seven long, faithful months; until the sweetest of my heart’s flock should return to pasture in my bosom. And now he has come, my lamb, my prince, even as he promised. He has come, drawing me to him over the hills, following the lark’s song of his love as it dropped to earth far forward of his steps. Eugenio! O, ecstasy! Thou hast dared this for my sake?”
“Child,” answered the admirable Ducos, “I should have dared only in breaking my word. Un honnête homme n’a que sa parole. That is the single motto for a poor captain, Nariguita. And who is this Señor Cangrejo?”
Some terror, offspring of his question, set her clinging to him once more.
“What dost thou here?” she cried, with immediate inconsistency—“a lamb among the wolves! Eugenio!”
“Eh!”—he took her up, with an air of bewilderment. “I am Sir Zhones, the English capitaine, though it loose me your favour, mamsellee. Wat! Damn eet, I say!”
She fell away, staring at him; then in a moment gathered, and leapt to him again between tears and laughter.
“But this?” she asked, her eyes glistening; and she touched the bandage.
“Ah! that,” he answered. “Why, I was wounded, and taken prisoner by the French, you understand? Also, I escaped from my captors. It comes, blood and splint and all, from the smashed arm of a sabreur, who, indeed, had no longer need of it.”
“For the love of Christ!” she cried in a panic. “Come away into the trees, where none will observe us!”
“Bah! I have no fear, I,” said Ducos. But he rose, nevertheless, with a smile, and, catching up the goatherd, bore her into the shadows. There, sitting by her side, he assured her, the rogue, of the impatience with which he had anticipated, of the eagerness with which he had run to realize this longed-for moment. The escapade had only been rendered possible, he said truthfully, by the opportune demand for salt. Doubtless she would help him, for love’s sake, to justify the venture to his General?