The steps sounded as if the man making them were in a hurry. So should her brother be, having so long delayed his return.
She glided out to meet him with an interrogatory on her lips.
“Valerian?”—this suddenly changing to the exclamation, “Madre de Dios! ’Tis not my brother!”
It was not, but a man pale and breathless—a peon of the establishment—who, on seeing her, gasped out,—
“Señorita! I bring sad news. There’s been a mutiny at the cuartel—a pronunciamento. The rebels have had it all their own way, and I am sorry to tell you that the colonel, your brother—”
“What of him? Speak! Is he—”
“Not killed, nina; only wounded, and a prisoner.”
Adela Miranda did not swoon nor faint. She was not of the nervous kind. Nurtured amid dangers, most of her life accustomed to alarms from Indian incursions, as well as revolutionary risings, she remained calm.
She dispatched messengers to the town, secretly, one after another; and, while awaiting their reports, knelt before an image of the Virgin, and prayed.
Up till midnight her couriers went, and came. Then one who was more than a messenger—her brother himself!