Several times, harassed by fatigue, they stopped by common accord, and then rushed on each other with renewed fury. The blood flowed from several slight wounds they had dealt each other, and dropped on the floor of the room. All at once don Felipe gathered himself up, and leapt forward with the rapidity of a jaguar; but his foot slipped in the blood, he tottered, and while he was striving to regain his balance, the whole of don Jaime's blade was buried in his chest.
The unhappy man heaved a stifled sigh, a flood of blood poured from his mouth, and he fell like a dog on the ground. The adventurer bent over him, he was dead—the blade had passed through his heart.
"Poor devil!" don Jaime muttered, "He brought it on himself."
After this laconic, funeral discourse, he fell on the guerillero's dolman and calconciras, and seized all the papers about him. Then he took up his revolver, resumed his mask, and wrapping himself as well as he could in his cloak, which was cut to pieces, he left the room, reached the passage, went through the hole in the hedge unnoticed by the sentry who was still standing in front of the door, and on arriving at a certain distance from the Palo Quemado, he imitated the hoot of the owl. Almost immediately López appeared with the two horses.
"To Mexico," don Jaime cried, as he bounded into the saddle; "this time, I believe, I hold my vengeance."
The two riders started at full speed. The delight which the adventurer experienced at the unhoped for success of his expedition, made him forget the pain of the stabs, slight it is true, which he had received in his duel.
[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
A SUPREME RESOLUTION.
The first beams of day were beginning to tinge the sky with opaline tints at the moment when the two horsemen reached the garita of San Antonio. For some time past they had checked the rapid pace of their steeds, had taken off their masks, and re-established such order as they could in their clothes, which had been dirtied and damaged by the numerous incidents of their night's ride. At some paces from the garita they mixed themselves up with the groups of Indians proceeding to market, so that it was easy for them to enter the city unnoticed. Don Jaime proceeded straight to the house he inhabited in the calle de San Francisco, near the Plaza Mayor.