"Maledito," said the Padre Trevino, a man with a pair of quiet and deeply set, but the most treacherous looking dark eyes that ever glanced out of a human head,. "Maledito!" he repeated, while playing with the knife in his sash, "so this is the fellow who wounded you and rescued the French officer?"
"Yes, Padre; but that is my affair, not yours," said Baltasar, haughtily.
"And your precious Frenchman—you conducted him no doubt to Valencia?" said the Padre, anxious apparently to make mischief.
"I left him very near it—indeed, he was my guide part of the way here," replied Quentin with composure.
"Very accommodating of him, certainly," said Baltasar, in whose face the scowl returned; it was evident, apart from his indignation at Quentin, that he had found some of the wrong eggs, the legends on which foretold the early abandonment of the entire Peninsula by the British, for his mind was full of ill-concealed anger and apprehension. "You see now, senor," he resumed with a malevolent grimace, "you see now that the spit has become a sword, and the sword only a spit. Por vida del demonio! but Don Tomaso Yriarte was right after all, for we must never take men or things for what they may appear."
While Quentin was pondering what reply to make to this strange speech, a drop of blood fell from the wound in Baltasar's head, and made a large scarlet spot on the open map of Alentejo. On seeing this the eyes of the Spaniard flashed fire, his nostrils seemed to dilate, and, striking the table with the haft of his dagger, he exclaimed—
"But that the fact of shooting the bearer of a British despatch—a messenger of Don Juan Hope, as Lazarillo says you are—might compromise me with the Junta of Castile as well as with your general, and thus injure the budding Spanish cause, by the Holy Face of Jaen! I would send you to keep company with those sixteen dogs whom Trevino shot to-night!"
"Senor, I was innocent of intending evil against you," urged poor Quentin.
"And this despatch which you bring, if it be as my soul forebodes, a notification that I am only to cover the retreat of the British when falling back upon Lisbon and the sea, then say over any prayer your heretic mother may have taught you, for you, Inglese, shall not see the sun of to-morrow rise. I never forgive an insult—a word or a blow!"
Though Quentin had been told at Portalegre somewhat of the contents of the despatch, he knew so little of the great game of war and politics about to be played in Spain that his mind misgave him, and he trembled in his heart lest the treasured paper which he now handed to this ferocious Spaniard, might indeed prove his death-warrant, and seal his doom! He thought of his pistols, and cast a glance around him—escape was hopeless, and a cruel smile wreathed the thin wicked lips of the Padre Trevino.