After uttering these words, she slowly withdrew and entered the room set apart for her. The bandit stood for a moment, crushed by this anathema; but he soon threw up his head, shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and lay down by the side of his sons, muttering in a hoarse and ironical voice:
"God! Does He exist?"
Soon, no other sound was audible in the jacal saving that produced by the breathing of the three men. Ellen was praying fervently, while the storm redoubled its fury outside.
[CHAPTER III.]
A CONVERSATION.
On leaving the cabin, Don Pablo recrossed the river, and found his way back to the thicket where he had tied his horse up. The poor animal, terrified by the lightning and the hoarse rolling of the thunder, uttered a snort of pleasure at seeing its master again. Without loss of a moment, the young man leaped into the saddle and started at a gallop.
The rain fell in torrents, the wind whistled violently, the young man feared at each moment losing his way, and groped through the immense solitude which stretched out before him, and which the darkness prevented him from sounding. Like all well-gifted men habituated to an adventurous life, Don Pablo de Zarate was well fitted for struggling. His will grew in proportion to the difficulties that rose before him, and instead of discouraging him, obstacles only confirmed him in his resolution. So soon as he had chosen an object, he reached it in spite of all.
His love for Ellen, born, as it were, through a thunderclap—as, in fact, most true loves spring into life, where the unexpected always plays the chief part—this love, we say, for which he was in no way prepared, and which surprised him at the moment which he least dreamed of it, had assumed, without his will, gigantic proportions, which all the reasons which should have rendered it impossible, only augmented.
Although he bore the deepest hatred for Red Cedar, and, had the opportunity presented itself, would have killed him without hesitation like a dog, his love for Ellen had become a worship, an adoration about which he no longer reasoned, but which he endured with that intoxication and that delight felt in forbidden things. This girl, who had remained so pure and chaste amid this family of bandits, possessed an irresistible attraction for him. He had said in his conversation with her he was intimately convinced that she could not be Red Cedar's daughter. It would have been impossible for him to give his reasons; but with that tenacity of purpose which only some few men possess he necessarily sought the proofs of this conviction which nothing supported, and, even more, he sought these proofs with the certainty of finding them.