"Why this astonishment?" the adventurer continued, in the same mocking voice. "Did you not expect me? Still, you should have supposed that I would come to seek you."
Don Melchior remained for a moment as if lost in thought. "Be it so," he at length said, "After all it is better to come to an end once for all," and he sat down again, apparently calm and careless, on the edge of the hammock.
Oliver smiled. "Very good," he said; "I would sooner see you thus: let us talk, we have time."
"Then you have not come with the intention of assassinating me?" he asked, ironically.
"Oh! What a bad thought that is of yours, my dear sir! I raise a hand against you! Oh, no! Heaven preserve me from it! That is the hangman's business, and I should be most sorry to poach on the manor of that estimable functionary."
"The fact is," he exclaimed, impetuously, "that you have entered my house as a malefactor, in disguise, of course, to assassinate me."
"You repeat yourself, and that is clumsy; if I have come to you in disguise it is because circumstances compelled me to take the precaution, that is all: moreover, I only followed your example," and suddenly changing his tone, he added—"by the by, are you satisfied with Juárez? Has he rewarded your treachery handsomely? I have heard say that he is a very greedy and mean Indian, and so, I suppose, he contented himself with making you promises?"
Don Melchior smiled disdainfully.
"Did you thus privily enter my house only to talk such trash to me?" he asked.
The adventurer rose, drew a revolver, stepped forward, and regarding him with a look of indescribable contempt, shouted, in a voice of thunder—