"Listen to me in your turn, and pay attention to my words, for they express my irrevocable resolution. I know not nor care to know, by what means, more or less honourable, you have succeeded in gaining the confidence of my partners, and becoming master of our secrets. Still it is my firm conviction that a cause which employs such men as yourself is compromised, if not lost; hence I renounce every combination in which you are called to play a part. Your antecedents, and the life you lead, have placed you without the pale of the law."
"I am a bandit—out with it! What matter so long as you succeed? Does not the end justify the means?"
"That may be your morality, but it will never be mine. I repudiate all community of ideas with men of your stamp. I will not have you either as accomplice or partner."
The squatter darted a look at him laden with hatred and disappointment.
"In serving us," Don Miguel continued, "you can only have an interested object, which I will not take the trouble of guessing at. An Anglo-American will never frankly aid a Mexican to conquer his liberty; he would lose too much by doing it."
"Then?"
"I renounce forever the projects I had formed. I had, I grant, dreamed of restoring to my country the independence of which it was unjustly stripped: but it shall remain a dream."
"That is your last word?"
"The last."
"You refuse?"