Wolfang’s face, not usually expressive, was a blank for some minutes, then slowly relaxed into a broad grin. The captain’s grin, as I have said elsewhere, boded no good.
“Hark ’e,” he whispered, “what hinders your getting hold of your fortune, if the knight dies: say, falls off his horse, or has his casque riddled by a bullet in battle—or now?”
“Ha!” Hilo answered quickly.
“Give me your arquebus, it carries a truer ball than mine,” he added moodily after an interval.
The captain did as he said, and the other tried it to his shoulder irresolutely twice or thrice.
“Climbing unsteadies my hand,” he exclaimed with an oath.
Upon which the captain cried. “Double the debt you owe me, and the work will be done.”
It might have been two hours after this, that Señor Inique riding slowly by the spot, lurched violently over his steed’s neck, which he grasped to save himself from falling, at the instant his men-at-arms were startled by the loud report of a carbine. All was consternation, two of the company running to support the maître-de-camp, while the others dashed into the thick mist to the right: the latter presently returned however with no tidings of the assassins, and the party conveyed the insensible knight to Angra, where Padilh was awaiting his arrival.
Don Pedro turned pale at the recital. “God forbid!” he said repeatedly, half aloud to himself, while musing gloomily by the side of his friend.
Meanwhile Carlo and De Ladron creeping noiselessly along parallel with the road, the better to baffle pursuit, came suddenly on the crouching figure of a man who was endeavoring to hide himself under a bush. Wolfang took him promptly by the throat, but before any violence could be done him, Hilo said: