The unknown raises the inanimate Perico in his robust arms, throws him across the horse, springs up beside him, presses his knees gently to the animal's flanks, and the noble creature darts away, gayly and lightly, as if unconscious of the double weight.
CHAPTER XIV.
In a solitary hostel, standing like a beggar beside the highway, the innkeeper and his wife were seated before their fire, in the dull tranquillity of persons as accustomed to the alternations of noisy life by day and complete isolation by night as the inhabitants of marshy places are to their intermittent fevers.
"May evil light on that hard-skulled sailor who took it into his head that there must be a new world, and never stopped till he ran against it," said the woman. "Had not the king already cities enough in this? What good has it done? Taken our sons off there, and sent us the epidemic. Do say, Andres, and don't sit sleeping there like a mole, if it has been of any other use."
"Yes, wife, yes," answered the innkeeper, half' opening his eyes, "the silver comes from there."
"Plague take the silver!" exclaimed the woman.
"And the tobacco," added the husband, slowly and lazily, again closing his eyes,
"A curse upon the tobacco!" said the wife angrily. "Do you think, you unfeeling father, that the silver or the tobacco are worth the lives they cost and the tears? Son of my soul! God knows what will become of him in that land where they kill men like chinches, and where everything is venomous, even the air!"
They heard at this moment a peculiar whistle. The innkeeper, springing to his feet, caught up the light and ran toward the door, exclaiming, "The captain!"
As he presented himself on the threshold, the rays of the lamp fell upon a man on horseback, with another man that looked like a corpse lying across the horse in front of him.