“Epa! Fear not, sisterling, for the goblins touch not those that are true. Remember, it is for Spain!” And pushing her gently inside their own doorway, and stooping to kiss her, he hurried down the street.
Lina dared not climb the noisy stairs to the deserted rooms. She crouched in the hall, shivering, drawing the manta about her shoulders as if with cold, but shutting her teeth bravely. The shuffle of Vicente’s broken shoes had already died away; and it seemed as if the whole world had slipped past with him. Ages and ages she waited, till she was ready to scream with fear; and then she sprang nervously to the door at a sound in the street. It was only a patrol shambling over the crazy cobblestones, but as it drew nigh she was seized with a sudden access of fear. Between them stumbled Vicente, a heavy hand on either shoulder.
“Let him go!” she cried, rushing upon the soldiers as if to strike them down. “He is my little brother, and has done nothing. Only we found the——”
“Cállete, Lina!” spoke up Vicente sharply. “If only the señor official will be so good as to take her with me to the general—for she is quite alone, señor.”
“It is well—come on, little Amazon!” said the officer, from whom war and starvation had not dried up all Andalusian humor. “Snails! But I thought she was to capture us! March!”
IV.
General Rodil pushed back his chair from the table, and his grave face took on a puzzled look as the officer and his odd prisoners were ushered into the room. “The general who never sleeps,” they called him—for at whatever hour of day or night, he was always appearing suddenly here, there, everywhere. Well masked was the faint heart into whose depths those gray eyes did not bore; tiny indeed the slackness that escaped them. Well might the ignorant invest him with a superstitious terror—this man who was really the garrison of Callao.
“Que cosa?” he demanded in a low, clear voice.
“Pues, señor generál,” said the officer, still standing at “salute.” “This boy we found in the Street of the Pelicans, as if waiting for some one. And when we searched him this was in his shirt.”