"A little Spanish girl, madame," replied the French butler, "who says that her brother has just been arrested for a rebel, and who came to us for shelter."
"Well, I say, we're not such foreigners yet but we can give shelter to a little girl!" exclaimed the Señor Pickard, in remarkably good English for a Cuban planter. He knew the danger of harboring the relative of a suspected rebel.
"Bring her to me," said the Señora, calmly.
The mistress of such a plantation is a queen in her own dominions, and a minute later Maria Nunez stood before her, telling her sad story, much as Cristobal told it to the kind old gentleman in Morro Castle.
Perhaps it was because he was an Ohio boy, and not a real señor at all, that the young Señor Pickard grew excited while the story was a-telling, and walked nervously up and down the gallery. Or it might have been because Maria was a remarkably pretty little Spaniard, with the dark flashing eyes of her countrywoman, and their thick black hair and rich complexion and delicate features. Her little story was soon told, and she stood there looking doubly pretty in her excitement and grief.
"You shall stay with me, you poor child, till the times are settled," said the señora, still calmly, and in good Spanish. "Alphonse, call my maid."
"Is that all?" exclaimed the young señor, in English, looking as if he had determined to drive out the Spanish troops single-handed. "Aren't you going to get the girl's brother out of prison? He will be sent to the Morro, and you know what will get him out of there. Can't Pedro—"
The elder señor stamped his foot impatiently.
"Have you no more sense than to mention that name?" he exclaimed. "Keep quiet, and leave this thing to me. For just about one York shilling I'd hoist the stars and stripes here and fortify the place. I am growing sicker of such doings every day. Go and tell Henry to have his horse ready to start for Havana at eight o'clock to-night."
Ignorant of course of these things, Cristobal had to devise a way of using his money for his liberation. One of those golden eagles, he knew, represented four months' pay of any of the soldiers who were guarding him. There was one young soldier in the guard, a boy of scarcely twenty, barefoot and ragged, whom he had marked long before as a fellow Catalan. For days this young fellow was kept at other work, but at length he appeared on guard again before the bars of the cell.