"Demonio! senores, speak not of my father."
"Why, Pedro?"
"Because I never knew him; but my mother, my poor mother, who loved her boys so well, so tenderly," he faltered, in a broken voice, while writhing in his bed.
"From Hawkshaw I learned the terrible story of your mother's fate and the crime of your brother Zuares, in the Barranca Secca," said Morley, who looked with deep interest on the strange workings of the mind exhibited by the expressive visage of the dying ruffian, whose sole human weakness seemed to be a strong love for the memory of his mother.
"Mia madre! mia madre!" said the once strong man, in a voice that became touching, while tears welled up into his eyes, long, long unused to such a moisture. "Oh, senores, bad, vile, cruel, wicked as you deem me, at this terrible hour, when well-nigh under weigh for—for—where?—it may be hell!—when I think of her—of the only human being who ever loved me—my heart swells with the old pang that was so keen, so very keen at first, on that awful evening in the Barranca Secca, and my memory goes back to the happier years beyond. I feel myself again a little boy and seem to hear her gentle voice calling me—Pedrillo—el muchacho Pedrillo—the same little boy who served at the altar of San Jago, who waked up in the winter nights and wept for his mother, and thought her dear, dear face the fondest, the sweetest, and the fairest under heaven—yes, fairer and kinder even than that of the blessed Madonna which hung in San Jago de Chili. Mia madre ha muerto!" he repeated, some four or five times, with incoherent fondness.
"And your father?" resumed Bartelot, after a pause, for they could not but respect this grief.
"I tell you, senores, I never knew my father," said Pedro, almost with a frown.
"Why?"
"He was Don Pedro Zuares de Barradas, a Spanish cavalier of high family, possessing great estates on the table land of Anahuac, and who was captain of the castle of San Juan de Ulloa, for the Government of the Free United States of South America. He is said to have perished at sea, by falling overboard in a gale when being conveyed to Spain to be tried and executed as a traitor to the king."
"All that we know; but he did not perish as you suppose," said Morley.