"How now, señor, shall the dog play?"
"It is cruel to rob him of his hour's liberty," said Juan, with a subdued voice; "but, this day, suffer him to remain with me."
"Well, señor, as you will," said Najara; "but I would you had some better friend,—at least, some one who could counsel you. There are runners arrived from the northern towns; and, at midday, Cortes will march into the city."
"The better reason, then, that I should have this friend, who have no other," said Juan, calmly.
"Harkee, señor," said Najara, with a sort of petulant sympathy, "if you would but curse yourself and your foes, or bemoan your fate a little, I should like it better than this stupid, womanish resignation.—Hark ye,—I care not if I tell you: I thought you had come athwart the fancies of Don Hernan, in the matter of the Doña, not that Don Hernan had wronged your own: I knew not that there was any old love between you."
"What art thou speaking of, Najara?" said Juan, with a hasty and troubled voice.
"This does, in some sense, weaken the sin of drawing sword upon him," continued the hunchback, "for no man loves to be robbed of his mistress.—Well,—the señora is sorry for you.—She thought to bribe me to let her speak with you.—Bribe me!—And yet I pitied her, for she was sorely distressed."
"For God's sake," exclaimed Juan, in extreme suffering, "speak me not a word of her; let me not hear her name."
"Well, be not cast down; she has much power with the general, and, doubtless, she will plead for you. Well, fare you well.—I did think to let Cortes know of her acts: but that might harden him against you still more.—Why should I waste thought upon him," muttered the deformed as he passed from the prison. "It is hard, or it seems hard, that heaven should give up a frame so beauteous and majestical, to be marred by the hangman's axe or rope, and leave a deformed lump like me, to scare little Indian girls and boys, and to be jibed at by all the craven loons of the army. But this is naught: if I am crooked, I am neither fool, traitor, nor coward, as most others are, in one degree or other, and sometimes in all."
As Najara had foretold, the army returned to Tezcuco about noon, as was made evident to Juan, by the sound of trumpets and cannon, and other warlike noises of rejoicing; which, continuing to fill the city for many hours, came to his ears like the tumult of a distant storm, and began to die away, only when the last twinkle of sunset, shooting through his narrow windows, had faded from the opposite wall.