"Dios hombre, what shall I do, what shall I do?" she cried. "I have suffered in the last few hours all the torments of the damned, like a soul lost a thousand years in purgatory! Oh, what shall I do? Lord and Saviour, Pitiful One, I do not seek forgiveness. I want to repay, I want to atone! I want to die myself!..."
Her voice fainted away. She got to her feet at last. Muttering feverish prayers, weeping like a soft rain, swaying and stumbling, she made up the path.
The policemen shivered out of their state of suspended animation. They recovered their wits; their dead eyes glinted. Savagely, they turned to look at the man among them who had caused the whole pitiful tragedy—the son of the dead sergeant and the poor old heartbroken mother, the masquerader and the traitor, Miguel Alvarado!
He was gone.
Seeking him, they dashed wildly among the boulders and bushes. They beat the ragged gorse with their carbines. They called loudly one to another. Suddenly, into the wan moonlight, stepped forth Jacinto Quesada.
"You seek Miguel Alvarado?" he asked.
"Heart of God, yes!"
"Then come with me."
They did not recognize Quesada. Not only because of the pallor of the moonlight, but more because he was garbed in the gray tweeds and foreign slouch hat of the Frenchman. He led them down the path to where they had hobbled their horses.
Here, supine in the weeds and bound hand and foot, lay the policeman, young Miguel. In the midst of his mother's pitiful confession, he had crept back down the road and, just about to mount his horse and ride away, had been captured by Quesada.