I had scarcely mastered the message, standing there close to the open window, when the words upon my lips were arrested, and my heart beat fast, as now, unmistakably no chimera of the brain, I could see six or seven figures glide out of the darkness towards the house, straight to where I stood with Lilla.
Nearer they came, stooping down and apparently making for the shade of the verandah, till they stopped within a couple of yards of us, and began whispering in what seemed to be broken Spanish, or the patois of the Indians. Then I felt my hands clutched more tightly than ever, as a voice that I recognised in an instant uttered a few words that sounded like an order, given as it was in a tongue very little of which I could comprehend, catching only a word or two, while my imagination supplied the rest.
It was plain enough that, perhaps ignorant of his loss, perhaps condoning it, Garcia had made common cause with the Indians, and Lilla was to be saved before fire was applied to the hacienda.
For a few moments there was a dead silence, and then the party glided along under the verandah.
“What was that Garcia said?” I then whispered to Lilla.
I knew that my interpretation must have been pretty correct from the start Lilla gave, and then her shudder.
“I dare not tell you,” she said, with a half sob.
Then leaving the window, after softly closing and securing it, we hurried, hand in hand, to my uncle.
“How long you have been!” he whispered.
“There was a party of six or seven by my window,” I said; “Garcia heading them.”