While saying this, Don Mariano offered the portfolio to Don Miguel, who, however, declined it.
"Those proofs are unnecessary for us, Don Mariano," he said; "we possess others more convincing still."
"What do you mean?"
"You shall understand." And Don Miguel rose.
Without being able to explain why it was so, Don Estevan felt a shiver all over his body, for he guessed, by a species of intuition, that his brother's accusation contained nothing so terrible as the facts Don Miguel was preparing to reveal. He threw up his head slightly, bent forward, and with panting chest and dilated nostrils, fascinated, as it were, by the chief of the adventurers, he awaited, with constantly increasing anxiety, what Don Miguel was going to say.
[CHAPTER XX.]
THE JUDGMENT.
The sun had disappeared on the horizon; shadows had assumed the place of light; the darkness falling from the sky had covered the forest with an impenetrable brown shroud. The Gambusinos lighted branches of ocote, and then the clearing, in which the events we are describing took place, was fantastically lighted by torches, whose flickering, ensanguined glare played on the trees and the persons collected under their dense foliage, and gave the whole scene a strange and sinister stamp.
Don Miguel, after looking around to demand attention, began speaking:—"As you have found that portfolio," he said, "I have nothing more to tell you. It was really your brother who committed the fearful crime with which you charge him. Fortunately, his object could not be completely attained. Your wife is dead, it is true, Don Mariano; but your daughter still lives. She is in safety, and it was I who was fortunate enough to tear her from her tortures, and from that In pace in which she was thrust alive. I will restore your daughter to you, Don Mariano, pure and uncontaminated as when I took her from her tomb."