"May God protect you, caballero!" he said politely. "It seems that the music pleases you."
"Greatly," the colonel answered, scarce able to retain his laughter at the sight of the singular person before him.
He was a tall fellow of eight-and-twenty at the most, marvellously thin, dressed in a ragged jacket, and haughtily folded in a cloak, whose primitive colour it was impossible to recognise, and which was as full of holes as a sieve. Still, in spite of this apparent wretchedness and starving face, the man had a joyous and decided expression about him, which it was a pleasure to look upon. His little black eyes, which looked as if pierced by an auger, sparkled with humour, and his manner had something distingué about it. He was mounted on a horse as thin and lanky as himself, against whose hollow flanks beat the straight sword called a machete, which the Mexicans continually wear at their side, passed through an iron ring instead of a sheath.
"You are very late on the road, compañero," the colonel continued, whose escort had by this time caught him up. "Is it prudent for you to travel alone at this hour?"
"What have I to fear?" the stranger replied. "What salteador would be such a fool as to stop me?"
"Who knows?" the colonel remarked with a smile. "Appearances are often deceitful, and it is not a bad plan to pretend poverty, in order to travel in safety along the high roads of our beloved country."
Though uttered purposelessly, these words visibly troubled the stranger; still he at once recovered, and continued in a hearty voice,—
"Unfortunately for me, any feint is useless. I am really as poor as I seem at this moment, although I have seen happier days, and my cloak was not always so ragged as you now see it."
The colonel, perceiving that the subject of conversation was disagreeable to his new acquaintance, said,—
"As you did not stop either at San Pedro or at Zapopan, for I presume that, like myself, you came from Guadalajara——"