“Why do you have the chests made so strong?” Wallace asked, after awhile.
“O, we need it,” he replied, “lifting them in and out the boats; and sometimes we have articles of value to carry. Now, that case has all our most important papers in it. So it is necessary that it should be made strong.”
“Yes,” said the stranger, again, with more energy than before, “the papers and all that money belong to the Spanish government. It was an infernal mean scheme letting those banditti into the banquet, but little Cristelle was wilful, and fancied their handsome clothes covered honest hearts.”
“Come, Don Jose,” said Harris, gayly, “do try to wake your sleepy ideas before you talk any more. I presume,” he added, turning to Wallace, and noting the dark foreboding that again crossed his brow, “that he refers to some valuable pieces of plate in our possession. You remember when the last rebellion took place the capital was said to have been robbed. At that time the insurgents placed some of their spoils in trust in our hands, and we still retain them. Don Jose is confused tonight; what with the sea-sickness, and the change from cold to warm air, he is nearly insensible,” and he laughed a careless, merry laugh, at the same time casting a look of stern, contemptuous reproof upon the cowering Spaniard.
At this stage of affairs the sound of heavy voices, and the tramp of measured steps, told that the men had returned. Don Jose sprang from his seat with a quick, nervous motion, drew his hat over his dark, flashing eyes, and waited impatiently for further motions. Wallace opened the door; and, as he supposed, the same four men that brought the boxes entered to remove them. He was deceived, however, by their dress; the whole band, consisting of between thirty and forty members, dressing alike, excepting the five leaders and Harris, who, although he had not yet reached the twenty-second year of his age, was universally acknowledged as leader of the whole; his father having held that place until his death, which occurred two years before.
* * * * *
And now the tangled thread of our history leads us back, three long and changing years, to a small thatched cottage in Italy, where all day long the air is heavy with perfume, and the sun goes down at eventide in a sea of purple, and crimson, and gold.
“Mother, you do wrong to judge Morrillo so harshly,” said a low, sweet voice, one mid-summer night. “True, he wears the bandit frock and cap, but I know they hide a noble head, and shield a generous heart. Besides, he is so young now that his father’s will is the only law he knows; he never had a mother to tell him how to live.” And the voice was low and sad, and the slight form of Arabel Ortono glided away from the drooping vine she was trailing, and sought her favorite retreat in the shaded veranda.
Her mother soon sought her there, and paused a moment in the low, arched doorway to contemplate the picture before her. Arabel was kneeling in a shaded niche, her fair young face flushing and paling alternately, her long golden-brown curls sweeping over the closely fitting spencer of darkest hue, and her eyes raised to catch the brightest moonbeams as they struggled through the thick vines.
“Well, Arabel,” said the mother, at last, interrupting the girl’s reverie, “you have argued the young pirate’s cause pretty faithfully; now let me hear you protect your own. Tell me how and why you first became interested in those most lawless of all unlawful men, and I will try to be reasonable with your wild fancies.”