"What use is experience?" the monk said, turning to the young men with a significant shrug of his shoulders. "Here is your father, a man whose whole life has been spent in the desert, who forgets at once its most sacred law, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and will not understand that this man, who, he says, saved his life, merely cured him to torture him at a later date, and have the pleasure of depriving him of that life when he is in rude health, instead of the miserable amount left him when they met."
"Oh, no," the squatter shouted, "you lie! That is impossible!"
"That is impossible!" the monk replied, with pity; "Oh, how blind men are! Come, reflect, gossip; had not this priest an insult to avenge?"
"It is true," Red Cedar muttered with a sigh; "but he forgave me."
"Forgave you! Do you ever forgive anybody? Nonsense, you are mad, gossip! I see there is nothing to be got out of you. Do what you like—we leave you."
"Yes," said the squatter, "leave me; there is nothing I wish more."
The monk and his comrades went away a few paces, but Fray Ambrosio suddenly returned. Red Cedar was still standing at the same spot with hanging head and frowning brow. The monk saw the squatter was shaken, and the moment had arrived to deal the great blow.
"Gossip," he said, "a parting word, or, if you prefer, a last piece of advice."
"What is there now?" Red Cedar said, nervously.
"Watch over Ellen!"