"To-night, Uncle Pedro," said Rita, laughing, "the horrors will go to the bottom of the well with the Frenchman, never to return."
"Amen, amen. I hope so," responded the good old man.
CHAPTER IX.
The next evening, Ventura brought with him to their reunion a small black water-dog, called Tambor. Never before had a strange dog been permitted at one of those meetings, so that he had hardly entered, wagging his tail, well washed, well combed, and with all the confidence of an exquisite, when Melampo, who held these graces to be of very little consequence, and an idler in lowest estimation, flew at him with might and main, and with a single blow of his paw flattened the creature; but without the remotest ambition to affect in this action, either the attitude or the air of the lion of Waterloo.
"In the first place," said Perico, "will you tell me, Ventura, how you managed to appear here yesterday, as if you had leaked through the roof, without any one's opening the door to you?"
"Well, it is difficult to guess," answered Ventura. "When I arrived I went to the house, and Aunty Curra, to whom my father gives a home for taking care of him, opened the door, and to get here sooner, and take you all by surprise, I jumped over the wall of the yard, as I used to when I was a boy."
"I was sure last night," observed Maria, "that I heard the door of the enclosure, and some one walking in the yard."
"Now,"' said Perico, "tell us what has happened to you. Have you been wounded?'
"He has been wounded," cried Uncle Pedro. "Look at his breast, and you win see a hole, which is the scar left by a ball that he received there, and that did not lay him dead, thanks to this button which deadened its force. See how it is flattened and hollowed out like the pan of a fire-lock. Look at his arm; look at the wound--"