"Now don't get angry, my dear fellow," he hastened to say, "I'm only telling you this for your own good. I mean that it is said you are endeavouring to stand with a leg in either camp; that while you pose among us as an active Oppositionist, you are in reality in communication with Balmaceda's leaders. In other words, that, while we have been trusting you, you have been selling our secrets to our foes."
"Well?"
Now it was a remarkable fact, that while the old gentleman expected and even dreaded an exhibition of wrath from his companion, he was in reality a good deal more frightened by this simple question than he would have been by the most violent outburst. And yet there was nothing startling in the word itself, nor in the manner in which it was uttered. Veneda still lounged in the same careless attitude against the wall, looking his companion up and down out of his half-closed eyes, as if to cause him any uneasiness would be the one thing furthest from his mind; but it was noticeable that his right hand had stopped fingering the trinkets on his watch-chain, and had passed into his coat-pocket, where a certain bulginess proclaimed the existence of a heavy object.
"Go on," he continued slowly, "since you seem to be so well informed; what else do my kind friends say?"
"Well, if you want it bluntly, Veneda, they say that if our side wins to-morrow, of which there seems to be little or no doubt, and you remain in the city, your life won't be worth five minutes' purchase."
"And—and your reason for telling me all this?"
"Simply because I want to warn you. And because, in spite of your Spanish name, which every one knows is assumed, you are an Englishman; and, as I said before, Englishmen ought to do what they can to help each other at such times as these. You don't think I've said too much?"
"By no means. I hope you'll understand how grateful I am to you for your trouble."
"No trouble; I only wish the warning may prove of some use to you. Look here, we haven't been very good friends in the past, but I do hope——"
"That in the future we may be David and Jonathan on a substantial New Jerusalem basis, I suppose. Do you hear those guns?"