As it was, the gaol-governor, seeing the danger, suddenly shut the cloister door, so saving it.
“Jest as I’ve been tellin’ ye all along, Cap,” coolly remarked Rock, as the slammed door ceased to make resonance; “we shed ha’ hanged the skunk, or shot him thar an’ then on the Shell Road. ’Twar a foolish thing lettin’ him out o’ that ditch when I had him in it. Darn the luck o’ my not drownin’ him outright! We’re like to sup sorrow for it now.”
Chapter Thirteen.
The Exiles Returned.
Of the dramatis personae of our tale, already known to our reader, Carlos Santander, Florence Kearney, and Cris Rock were not the only ones who had shifted residence from the City of New Orleans to that of Mexico. Within the months intervening two others had done the same—these Don Ignacio Valverde and his daughter. The banished exile had not only returned to his native land, but his property had been restored to him, and himself reinstated in the favour of the Dictator.
More still, he had now higher rank than ever before; since he had been appointed a Minister of State.
For the first upward step on this progressive ladder of prosperity Don Ignacio owed all to Carlos Santander. The handsome aide-de-camp, having the ear of his chief, found little difficulty in getting the ban removed, with leave given the refugee—criminal only in a political sense—to come back to his country.
The motive will easily be guessed. Nothing of either friendship or humanity actuated Santander. Alone the passion of love; which had to do not with Don Ignacio—but his daughter. In New Orleans he himself dared no longer live, and so could no more see Luisa Valverde there. Purely personal then; a selfish love, such as he could feel, was the motive for his intercession with the political chief of Mexico to pardon the political criminal. But if he had been the means of restoring Don Ignacio to his country, that was all. True, there was the restitution of the exile’s estates, but this followed as a consequence on reinstatement in his political rights. The after honours and emoluments—with the appointment to a seat in the Cabinet—came from the Chief of the State, Santa Anna himself. And his motive for thus favouring a man who had lately, and for long, been his political foe was precisely the same as that which actuated Carlos Santander. The Dictator of Mexico, as famed for his gallantries in love as his gallantry in war—and indeed somewhat more—had looked upon Luisa Valverde, and “saw that she was fair.”