"After that he went out no more, and I took my blankets into his room and slept on the floor, and all night long I could hear him tossing on his cot. Sometimes he would say, 'Are you there, Fermin?' and I would say, 'I am always here, mi teniente,' and then he would rest for a little while.
"But one night I woke and he was not on his cot. I got up to look and he came in from the balcony—there was one of those closed balconies all around the convent, outside the rooms—and he was dressed in his full uniform, and had his two revolvers and his shotgun. He did not seem to see me.
"'Mi teniente!' I said.
"He looked where I was, and still he did not seem to see me. 'Keep a good lookout,' he said. 'They may come at any time.' He went out into the balcony again, and I could hear his feet—tramp, tramp, very slow—while he went down to the far end and came back on the other side.
"Aí, but I was scared! We were all scared, for every night after that we could hear his feet, and he never seemed to see us, but sometimes he would call: 'On guard, there! They may come at any time.' We were all scared, but we did all we could, if we were frightened. Not one of us ran away, not even that baby José.
"And then the end came, the end of the game for my teniente. Five days I brought his food and he never touched it, only drank aguardiente instead. And five nights, all night long, we heard him marching round and round the balcony, with his two revolvers and his shotgun. The last night I was so tired that I fell asleep. I do not know how long I slept, but all at once I heard my teniente call 'Halt!' and then I heard him laugh, and then his feet, quick, as if he ran, and then a crash on the ground outside. I ran, and some of the guard ran, and we found him lying on the flagstones of the patio, dead where he had fallen.
"That is the way they killed my teniente,—my teniente who might have been Governor-General of the world if they had let him play the game. He was not afraid of the end of it. Even when he was crazy, and heard the enemies we could not see coming, he only laughed and ran out to meet them."
A last ember of the fire flamed up, and Fermin Majusay turned his face quickly from the telltale light. "It was a long story," he said, and loosened his revolver in the holster. "Sleep without fear, Señor," he said. "No one will trouble us while I am here."