Thus saying, General Harero descended into the secret passage from whence he had just emerged, and replacing the stone above his head, the prisoner heard the grating of the rusty bolts and bars as they were closed after him. They grated, too, most harshly upon his heart, as well as upon their own hinges, for they seemed to say, "thus perishes your last hope of reprieve-your last possibility of escape from the fate that awaits you."
"No matter," said he, to himself, at last, "life would be of little value to me now if deprived of the presence of Isabella, and that dear boy, Ruez, and therefore I decided none too quickly as I did. Besides, in honor, I could hardly accept my life at his hands on any terms-he whom I have to thank for all my misfortunes. No, no; let them do their worst, I know my fate is sealed; but I fear it not. I will show them that I can die as I have lived, like a soldier; they shall not triumph in my weakness so long as the blood flows through my veins."
With this reflection and similar thoughts upon his mind, he once more threw himself upon the hard damp floor, and after thinking long and tenderly of Isabella Gonzales and her brother, he once more dropped to sleep, but not until the morning gun had relieved the sentinels, and the drum had beat the reveille.
CHAPTER VIII.—THE FAREWELL.
THE apartment in Don Gonzales's house appropriated as Ruez's sleeping room, led out of the main reception hall, and adjoined that of his sister Isabella. Both rooms looked out upon the Plato, and over the Gulf Stream and outer portions of the harbor, where the grim Moro tower and its cannon frown over the narrow entrance of the inner bay. One vessel could hardly work its way in ship shape through the channel, but a thousand might lay safely at anchor inside this remarkably land-locked harbor. At the moment when we would introduce the reader to the house of the rich old Don Gonzales, Isabella had thrown herself carelessly upon a couch in her room, and half sighing, half dreaming while awake, was gazing out upon the waters that make up from the Caribbean Sea, at the southward, and now and then following with her eyes the trading crafts that skimmed the sparkling waters to the north.
As she gazed thus, she suddenly raised herself to a sitting position, as she heard the suppressed and most grievous sobs of some one near the room where she was, and rising, she approached the window to discover the cause of this singular sound. The noise that had excited her curiosity came from the next chamber, evidently, and that was her brother's. Stealing softly round to the entrance of his chamber, she went quietly in and surprised Ruez as lay grieving upon a couch with eyes filled with tears.
"Why, Ruez, what does this mean? Art sick, brother, that you are so depressed?" asked the beautiful girl, seating herself down by his side.
"Ay, sister, sick at heart," said the boy, with a deep drawn sigh.