"The blue-eyed maiden will be the wife of a chief."
"Wah! but why does my brother detain the Great Eagle?"
Antinahuel only replied by a smile, the expression of which the chief could not mistake.
"Oh, good!" he rejoined; "my brother is a great chief—who is able to fathom his thoughts?"
The Araucano warrior rose, quitted Antinahuel, and walked about the camp, the order and position of which he feigned to admire, but in reality he drew nearer and nearer, in an almost imperceptible manner, to that part at which the prisoners were seated.
"Let my brother look," Antinahuel said, pointing to Doña Rosario; "does not that woman deserve to espouse a chief?"
"She is pretty!" Trangoil-Lanec replied, coldly; "But I would give all the palefaces in the world for one bottle of such firewater as I have here."
"Has my brother some firewater?" Antinahuel asked, whose eyes sparkled at the thought.
"Yes," the chief replied; "look!"
The Toqui turned round, and the Aucas profited by the movement to cleverly let fall upon Rosario's lap the paper committed to his charge by Louis.