"Yes, I see—I know," said the other stammering, and turning his eyes somewhat cautiously from side to side. At last he muttered quickly in an undertone—"Diego, there are here too many quick-eared listeners; I will seek you in your tent an hour hence. The man is not to die till nightfall."
[CHAPTER XXV.]
MONTORO DE DIEGO TURNS HANGMAN.
A good deal within the hour Pedro de Alvarado stepped into Montoro's tent, and with somewhat scant ceremony; for, Spaniard though he was, he felt ceremony and strict punctuality also somewhat out of the reckoning where a man's life was concerned.
Besides, he had just seen Morla sitting bound upon the ground between two guardians, and with the rope beside him, with which he was to be hung so soon as the priest should have been fetched back to the camp to confess him. And the poor wretch had appealed to his superior with a mixture of pitifulness and indignation.
"Ah, Captain! save me from this dismal fate. You should, in very justice you should, for you contented not yourself with stealing skin and bone done up in feathers. And yet you came off with no punishment at all."
"Thou impudent fellow!" exclaimed Alvarado. "Callest thou a furious rebuke before the whole force, and accompanied with threats too, nothing? Thinkest thou that thy beggarly life is worth a Spanish noble's honour?"
Morla was in no great haste to answer this peremptory question; but at last he grumbled out—
"If one has not the honour, I suppose, then, one may at least value the life; and I call it hard lines to lose all one's got."