“Danger! I do not comprehend you.”
“You will, presently. You may say to the captain outside there, that if he persists in breaking open your gates, he may capture us alive. That he may do, beyond doubt; but as to yourself, and your two daughters, he will find nothing more of you than your dead bodies. You understand me now?”
Arroyo need not have been so explicit. Half the speech would have been enough to explain his fearful meaning. The air of ferocity that characterised his features was sufficiently indicative of his thoughts.
The daughters of Don Mariano, terrified at his looks, flung themselves simultaneously into the arms of their father.
At that moment the notes of the bugle resounded through the building; and the voice of the dragoon was heard for the second time pronouncing his summons.
The haciendado, troubled about the fate of his children—thus completely in the power of his unfaithful vaqueros, whose companions crowded the corridor—permitted the second summons to pass without response.
“Mil Devionios!” cried the bandit, “why do you hesitate? Come! show yourself at the window, and make known to this furious captain what I have told you. Carrai! if you do not—”
The bugle sounding for the third summons drowned the remainder of the brigand’s speech. As soon as the trumpet notes had ceased to echo from the walls, a voice was heard from without, the tones of which produced within the heart of Gertrudis at the same moment both fear and joy.
It was the voice of Rafael.
Quickly following it were heard the cries of the troopers as they called aloud—