Chapter 9 THE BRIEF FAREWELL.

Alcala had now reached the place where the narrow lane in which stood the posada in which he had passed the night opened into the highway leading directly to Seville. He was now on the road along which, ten minutes previously, had passed the herd of fighting-bulls destined for the arena. Alcala saw the print of their hoofs in the dust; he noticed at no great distance the gleam of their horns above the cloud raised by their tramping and that of their mounted conductors. Alcala had been near enough to hear that defiant roar of the monarch of the herd that had thrilled on the ear of Lucius.

Campeador had raised his tasselled head, and pricked up his ears at the noise.

Alcala bent down to stroke the neck of his steed. "Ah! Campeador," he gloomily said as he did so, "does instinct tell you that there is death in that sound? You too will suffer from my accursed folly and pride. You deserve a better fate, my poor horse, and a far better master!"

As Alcala slowly rode onwards, following in the track of the bulls, he saw a muleteer approaching towards him. Lepine, after his brief and unsatisfactory colloquy with the herdsman, had turned off in a different direction, or he must have encountered his friend. The figure of the muleteer was the only one visible at this point upon the narrow road, which lay through a cutting.

Alcala, buried in his painful reflections, would scarcely have noticed the muleteer, had not the man, when they had almost met, respectfully greeted him by his name.

"Se?or de Aguilera," said the messenger of Inez, approaching the cavalier's stirrup, "I bear to you a letter from a se?orita." And the muleteer held up to Alcala the epistle which had been intrusted to his charge.

Alcala stopped his horse, shifted his lance to his bridle-hand, took the note, and with a little difficulty disengaged it from its envelope. Only the presence of a stranger made him refrain from groaning aloud as he read the impassioned words of his sister. Her threat to bury herself in a convent thrilled his soul with unspeakable anguish; for gentle and yielding as was the nature of Inez, her brother had never yet known her fail in keeping her word, even in the face of opposition. If anything could have added to the misery of the young Spaniard, it was such a letter as this. For a moment it almost shook his firm resolution to brave out the consequences of his rash boast; for a moment Alcala thought of turning his bridle and urging Campeador to bear him afar from Seville! But it could not be; every drop of proud Spanish blood in the veins of an Aguilera seemed to protest against so ignominious a flight. Alcala, whose brain was dizzy from the violence of his emotions, was recalled to himself by the muleteer's question,-

"Has the caballero any message for me to take back to the se?orita?"

The muleteer was no stranger to Alcala, who knew him to be an honest but ignorant man, unable even to read. The cavalier would not send a verbal reply to the note of Inez, but had no time to return to the posada in order to write what he could not speak. Alcala drew out a pencil-case which he chanced to have on his person, but he carried with him no paper, and he would not return to the unhappy Inez her own epistle; that token of her affection he would bear with him to the last. The muleteer guessed from his gesture that the cavalier wished to write, and saw that he had no writing materials save the pencil-case in his hand. The man supplied the want, in his own rough way, by stooping and picking up from the road a dusty fragment of paper which happened to be lying upon it. There was no opportunity of procuring a more suitable sheet; Alcala scarcely even noticed that the paper was part of a leaf torn from a printed book. There was room on the margin for a few words; and resting the paper on his saddle, after giving the muleteer charge of his spear, Alcala hastily scrawled the brief note which was soon afterwards received by his sister. How many bitter tears were to be shed over that leaf!

"It is I who am blighting her young life; it is I who am riveting chains upon her whose only fault is that of loving an ungrateful brother too well," muttered Alcala to himself, as he saw his messenger speed on before him.

The painful task of answering the letter of Inez being over, Alcala thrust it under his scarf, gently shook his rein, and rode on. No prisoner condemned to suffer at an auto-da-fé had ever gone to the stake erected in the Plaza more hopeless of deliverance than Alcala felt at that moment. His embroidered vestments were to him as the san-benito worn by the doomed; the horrible ordeal from which nature shrank was before him, and he had no enthusiasm of zeal, no joy of hope, to bear him through it.

Some stragglers, bound for the sport at the Coliseo, were overtaken by Aguilera. They recognized him as a picador by his peculiar dress, turned eagerly to look at him, and in loud tones made their remarks on the horseman as he passed them.

"Brave caballero! how splendid he looks!" cried an Andalusian maiden.

"But scarcely strong enough to drive his spear deep into the tough hide of a bull," remarked her more experienced companion.

"Tush, Tomaso, it's all skill," laughed the girl. "I warrant you the picador knows how to manage his horse in the ring, and avoid the thrust of the horns-"

The conclusion of the sentence did not reach the ears of Alcala; he had urged his steed to a quicker pace, in order to get beyond hearing.

* * *