"It is true."
"You must be wild beasts, then."
"We are your judges."
"Oh, let me live, be it only for a day!"
"You are condemned."
"Maldición on you, demons with human faces! Assassins, who gives you the right to kill me?"
"By the right every man possesses to crush a serpent. For the last time, have you any arrangements to make?"
Don Estevan, crushed by this fearful contest, kept silence for an instant; then two tears slowly dropped from his fever-burned eyes, and he murmured in a gentle, almost childlike voice,—"Oh, my sons, my poor darlings! What will become of you when I am no longer here?"
"Make haste," the hunter said.
Don Estevan fixed a haggard eye upon him. "I have two sons," he said, speaking as in a dream; "they have only me left, alas! and I am about to die! Listen, if you are not utterly a wild beast. Swear to perform what I ask of you?"