"I thank you for your good intentions. Unfortunately, they are more injurious than useful, under present circumstances. But how did you manage to enter the city?"
"Oh, very easily," Brighteye answered, and he told in a few words how they had found them. The hunter shook his head.
"It was a bold action," he said, "and I must allow that it was well carried out. But how does it profit you to have incurred such perils? Greater ones await you here—profitless, and of no advantage to us."
"Perhaps so; but whatever happens," Don Miguel—answered firmly, "you understand that I have not blindly exposed myself to all these dangers without a very powerful motive."
"I suppose so; but I try in vain to discover the motive."
"You need not search long, I will tell you."
"Speak!"
"I must—you understand, I hope, old fellow," he said, laying a stress on each, syllable—"I must see Doña Laura."
"See Doña Laura! it is impossible," Marksman exclaimed.
"I know nothing about impossibility; but this I know, that I will see her."