"Would you let this poor child endure all the agonies of purgatory and wretchedly die, while you carry out your cruel scheme of vengeance? Look at him, Don Jaime! Give heed to the legs that are like walking-sticks, the poor thin wrists, the bony little neck, the body limp as a soaking dish towel!
"Have pity on him, Don Jaime—you who know what it is to suffer! The Senor Don Dios has been far more cruel to him than ever He has been to you! Not a month gone. He took the child's widowed mother from him; she was one of the first to be claimed by the plague. Now the poor baby is all alone in the world!"
Quesada swathed the boy in the blanket. Cradling him tenderly in his arms, he got quietly to his feet. He waited.
Don Jaime hesitated. The horse-pistol shook violently in his hand. His agate eyes softened.
Then, all at once, an appalling change swept over Don Jaime. Deep in the crypts and catacombs of his brain, old rankling memories stirred—old painful and dolorous memories got up, and walked about, and paraded back and forth in somber procession. He could have screamed, so tortured was he that moment!
Why should he, the grievously outraged one, show pity? Why should he turn aside from his scheme of vengeance to succor this dying child, these wretched people? Once before had he been robbed when he sought revenge for a mortal wrong. This jade's mother had run off with a gypsy picador. And though the hand of God had intervened in that elopement as a sublime instrument of vengeance, always had he regretted, through the dreary and bitter years, that his own hand had not slain the mother of Felicidad.
Not another time would he suffer himself to be turned aside. He was like that awful Jehovah of the Jews! He would be revenged up to the hilt, paid back in full!
He tore his eyes from the piteous face of the boy Gabriel. He freshened his grip on the horse-pistol, lifted it up. Slowly over the level of it he eyed the waiting girl.
Rose suddenly a shout from Quesada:
"Take the boy away, Alfonso Robledo! He is only a peasant's sniveling cub, a mountaineer's orphan brat! What cares the grandee of Spain for our little Gabriel? Take him away; the hidalgo Don Jaime will have none of him! Let him die!"