"Why did you not do so? At any rate I should have died without dishonouring an honourable name."
"Deuce take the honourable name, and the man who bears it! My dear fellow, you annoy me by your ridiculous pretensions; you forget, with your mania for nobility, that you are only a foundling."
El Buitre frowned and seized his lieutenant's arm.
"Enough on that subject, Red Blood; you know that I have already warned you that I would not suffer any jesting on that head."
"Bah! What's the odds about being a foundling? A man ought not to feel annoyed at that; it is one of those accidents for which the most honest fellow cannot be responsible."
"You are my friend, Red Blood; or, at least, seem to be so."
"In your turn, my noble Mr. John Stanley," the bandit sharply interrupted him, "do not express such doubts about me; they grieve and insult me more than I can express. I am attached to you as the blade of my bowie-knife is to the hilt I am yours, body and soul. I have only that one virtue, if it be one; so pray do not strip me of it."
El Buitre remained silent for a moment, and then continued in a conciliating voice,—
"I am wrong. Pardon me, brother; in truth, I have had sufficient proofs of your friendship to have no right to doubt it. Still it seems to me so strange, that I at times ask myself how it comes that you, Red Blood, who hate humanity in a mass—you to whom nothing is respectable or sacred—feel for me a friendship which rises to the most complete abnegation and the most utter weakness. That appears to me so extraordinary, that I would give much to hold the solution of the problem."
"You are an ass, John!" the bandit replied in a mocking tone. "What is the use of telling you why I love you? You would not understand me. Suffice it for you to know that it is so. Do you believe me, then, a perfect ferocious brute, incapable of generous instincts?"