"Yes; I hardly know whether I stood on my head or my heels when I was told. It was old Mr. Warren who informed me. I went to him because I dared not go to your mother. I was afraid that—"
"All right; I understand."
"So I went to Warren, and he began a long yarn; but as soon as he said you were alive, I was off like a shot to Lima."
Then he talked of my mother, repeating the messages she had given him, and I could have listened for hours. As it was, I plied him with questions, asking this and that—if my pony was well; had he seen Rosa Montilla; was my mother less sad; and a hundred other things, many of them trivial enough, yet full of interest to me.
At the end I asked how he had found his way to the Hidden Valley.
"Oh!" replied he with a jolly laugh, "that was simple. I hunted up your black-browed bandit, who passed me on to one of his band. How he found the way I can't tell you, but he brought me along all right."
"And now what are we going to do?"
"Well, that depends. If the Spaniards give in, we can just go quietly back home."
"And if they don't?"
"Well, in that case—"