"One word more, I beg of you."

"Speak."

"What do you intend doing with the girl whom a strange accident has thrown into your power?"

"I do not know; events will decide her fate; I shall regulate my conduct by that of our common enemy."

"You said yourself," Don Miguel continued, "that the girl is innocent of her father's crimes."

Bloodson gave him a peculiar glance

"Do you not know, Don Miguel," he answered, in a hollow voice, "that in this world the innocent always suffer for the guilty?"

And, not adding a word further, he gave the Mexicans a profound bow, and slowly retired.

The two gentlemen looked after him, as he gradually disappeared in the gloom of the Teocali; then they fell back on their beds despondingly, not daring to impart to each other the sorrowful thoughts that oppressed them.