"If you will be so kind as to explain, señor," I said with unaffected astonishment.
"You hold to it? Carrajo! How then of the packet in your bosom?"
"That?" I exclaimed, at once perceiving the cause of his continued suspicion. Some one had spied upon me and seen the packet. I reached my hand into my hunting-shirt, only to hesitate and draw it out again, empty. It seemed a profanation to expose my treasures to his gaze.
"You pause! You dare not produce the packet! In it lies your condemnation!" he cried.
The folly of my course flashed upon me. Why should I set a mere fanciful sentiment against the lulling of his suspicions? If I did not myself hand over the packet, he would have it taken from me by force.
He started to rise, but I caught the little bundle from my bosom and reached it across the table. Instead of rising, he bent forward, and, with forced deliberation, began to open the folds of the waxed parchment cover. First exposed was the corner of the flag.
"Aha!" he exclaimed, his eyes flashing across at me in fieriest anger. "Explain that, if you can!—a malicious desecration of the flag of His Most Catholic Majesty!"
"Not so!" I flung back at him. "Look what is marked upon it. Those letters were a message to me. I found it within the undisputed boundaries of my country, at the town of the Pawnee Republicans. It was a message to me, and I took it, for it was mine."
"Ah! ah! a message! You confess, señor spy!"
I pointed to the last unwrapped fold. He turned it open, his face keen with exultant expectation. The now powdered leaves of the magnolia bloom puzzled him for the moment. Not so the handkerchief. His eye was instantly caught by the initials in the corner. Without a second glance, he averted his gaze until he had drawn up the edge of the snowy damask cloth over my stained and crumpled treasures.