The strange and mysterious manner of the assault, the stunning violence of his fall, and his position on regaining the consciousness of which he had for a brief space been deprived, combined to bewilder the gipsy, and temporarily to quell the courage, or, as it should perhaps rather be termed, the passive stoicism, usually exhibited by him in circumstances of danger. He had been dragged into the wine-cellar, and seated with his back against a cask; his wrists and ankles were bound with ropes, and beside him knelt a man busily engaged in searching, his pockets. The light was so faint that at first he could not distinguish the features of this person; but when at last he recognized those of Paco, he conjectured to a certain extent the nature of the snare into which he had fallen, and, as he did so, his usual coolness and confidence in some degree returned. His first words were an attempt to intimidate the muleteer.
"Untie my hands," said he, "or I shout for help. I have only to call out, to be released immediately."
"If that were true, you would have done it, and not told me of it," retorted Paco, with his usual acuteness. "The walls are thick; and the vault deep, and I believe you might shout a long while before any one heard you. But I advise you not to try. The first word you speak in a louder tone than pleases me, I cut your throat like a pig; with your own knife, too."
And, by way of confirming this agreeable assurance, he drew the cold blade across Jaime's throat, with such a fierce determined movement, that the startled gipsy involuntarily shrunk back. Paco marked the effect of his menace.
"You see," said he, sticking the knife in the ground beside him, and continuing his in investigation of the esquilador's pockets; "you had better be quiet, and answer my questions civilly. For whom is this letter?" continued he, holding up Rita's missive, which he had extracted from the gipsy's jacket.
But although the esquilador (partly on account of Paco's threats, and partly because he knew that his cries were unlikely to bring assistance) made no attempt to call out, he did not, on the other hand, show any disposition to communicativeness. Instead of replying to the questions put to him, he maintained a surly, dogged silence. Paco repeated the interrogatory without obtaining a better result, and then, as if weary of questioning a man who would not answer, he continued his search without further waste of words. The two rings and Rita's letter he had already found; they were succeeded by a number of miscellaneous objects which he threw carelessly aside; and having rummaged the esquilador's various pockets, he proceeded to unfasten his sash. The first demonstration of a design upon this receptacle of his wealth, produced, on the part of the gipsy, a violent but fruitless effort to liberate his wrists from the cords that confined them.
"Oho!" said Paco, "is that the sore place? Faith! there is reason for your wincing," he added, as the gold contained in the girdle fell jingling on the floor. "This was not all got by clipping mules."
"It was received from you, the greater part of it," exclaimed the gipsy, forced out of his taciturnity by his agony at seeing Paco, after replacing the money in the sash, deliberately bind it round his own waist.
"I worked hard and ran risk for it, and you paid it me willingly. Surely you will not rob me!"
Without attending to this expostulation, Paco secured the gold, and then rising to his feet, again repeated the question he had already twice put to his prisoner.