"They have something else to do there than think about us."

"Oh! I cannot believe that."

A slave announced Don Torribio Carvajal.

Don Torribio came in, dressed in the splendid uniform of a colonel in the Argentine army, with an aide-de-camp's badge on his left arm. The two officers, on his entrance, felt an inward tremor Don Torribio bowed to them.

"Is it really you, Don Torribio?" the colonel asked.

"Well, I suppose so," he answered, with a smile.

"And your long journey?"

"I have just arrived."

"And this uniform?"

"Well, gentlemen, as I was tired of being regarded in the colony as a mysterious being, a sorcerer, a vampire, or something of the sort, I resolved to become a man, like the rest of you."