"I will pray for the salvation of your soul," said he in a low tone.
"Do you release me from my oath?"
"Yes," replied Don Antonio, in a firm voice; "go, and may G.o.d bless you for your fidelity!"
The n.o.ble adventurer retired in silence.
His horse had remained at some short distance.
Diaz soon reached it, and holding the bridle in his hands, walked slowly towards the spot where the river forked.
In the mean time the sun followed its eternal course--the shadows gradually contracted--the black vultures flew in circles above the heads of the four actors in the terrible drama the last scene of which was now drawing near. From the depths of the Misty Mountains, shrouded in vapour, might be heard, at intervals, dull rumbling sounds, like thunder, followed by distant explosions.
Pale, but resigned, the unfortunate Count de Mediana remained standing.
Buried in deep reverie, he did not appear to notice the continually decreasing shadow.
All exterior objects vanished from his sight. His thoughts were divided between the past which no longer concerned him, and the future he was about to enter.
However, pride still struggled within him, and he maintained an obstinate silence.
"My Lord Count," said Fabian, who was willing to try a last chance, "in five minutes the poignard will have ceased to cast a shadow."
"I have nothing to say of the past," replied Don Antonio. "I must now think only of the future of my race. Do not, therefore, misjudge the sense of the words I am about to speak. Whatever may be the form in which it may come, death has no power to terrify me."
"I am listening," said Fabian gently.
"You are very young, Fabian," continued Mediana, "and the thought of the blood that has been shed will therefore be so much the longer a burthen to you."
Fabian"s countenance revealed the anguish of his feelings.
"Why then so soon pollute a life which is scarcely begun? Why refuse to follow a course which the unlooked-for favour of Providence opens to you? Here you are poor, and without connections. G.o.d restores you to your family, and, at the same moment, confers wealth upon you. The inheritance of your race has not been squandered by me. I have for twenty years borne the name of Mediana, at the head of the Spanish n.o.bles, and I am ready to restore it to you with all the honours I have conferred upon it. Accept then a fortune which I joyfully restore to you, for the isolation of my life is burthensome to me; but do not purchase it by a crime, for which an imaginary act of justice cannot absolve you, and which you will repent to your last hour."
Fabian replied, "A judge who presides at his tribunal must not listen to the voice of nature. Supported by his conscience, and the service he renders to society, he may pity the criminal, though his duty requires that he shall condemn him. In this solitude, these two men and myself represent human justice. Refute the crime attributed to you, Don Antonio, and I shall be the happiest of us two; for though I shudder to accuse you, I cannot escape the fatal mission which heaven has imposed upon me."
"Consider well, Fabian, and remember that it not pardon, but oblivion, for which I sue. Thanks to that oblivion, it rests with you to become, in my adopted son, the princely heir of the house of Mediana. After my death my t.i.tle will expire."
As he listened to these words the young man became deadly pale; but spurning in his heart the temptation held out to him, Fabian closed his ears to that voice which offered him so large a share of the riches of this world, as though he had but heard the light whispers of the breeze amid the foliage of the trees.
"Oh, Count Mediana, why did you kill my mother?" cried Fabian, covering his face with his hands; then, glancing towards the poignard planted in the sand, "My lord of Armada," he added, solemnly, "the poignard is without a shadow!"
Don Antonio trembled in spite of himself, as he then recalled the prophetic threat, which twenty years before the Countess de Mediana had compelled him to hear.
"Perhaps," she had said, "the G.o.d whom you blaspheme will ordain, that in the heart of a desert, untrodden by the foot of man, you shall find an accuser, a witness, a judge, and an executioner."
Accuser, witness, and judge were all before him, but who was to be the executioner? However, nothing was wanting for the accomplishment of the dreadful prophecy.
A noise of branches, suddenly torn apart, was heard at this moment.
The moment after, a man emerged from the brushwood, his habiliments dripping with water and soiled with mud. It was Cuchillo.
The bandit advanced with an air of imperturbable coolness, though he appeared to limp slightly.
Not one of the four men, so deeply absorbed in their own terrible reflections, showed any astonishment at his presence.
"Carramba! you expected me then?" he cried; "and yet I persisted in prolonging the most disagreeable bath I have ever taken, for fear of causing you all a surprise, for which my self-love might have suffered,"
(Cuchillo did not allude to his excursion in the mountains); "but the water of this lake is so icy that rather than perish with cold, I would have run a greater risk than meeting with old friends."
"Added to this I felt a wound in my leg reopen. It was received some time since, in fact, long ago, in my youth.
"Senor Don Estevan, Don Tiburcio, I am your very humble servant."
A profound silence succeeded these words. Cuchillo began to feel that he was acting the part of the hare, who takes refuge in the teeth of the hounds; but he endeavoured by a great show of a.s.surance to make the best of a position which was more than precarious.
The old hunter alone glanced towards Fabian, as though to ask what motive this man, with his impudent and sinister manner, and his beard covered with greenish mud, could offer for thus intruding himself upon them.
"It is Cuchillo," said Fabian, answering Bois-Rose"s look.
"Cuchillo, your unworthy servant," continued the bandit, "who has been a witness to your prowess, most worthy hunter of tigers. Decidedly,"
thought Cuchillo, "my presence, is not so obnoxious to them as I should have supposed."
Then feeling his a.s.surance redoubled at the reception he had met with, which though cold and silent as that with which every new-comer is received in the house of death, still gave him courage to say, observing the severe expression on every face:
"Pardon me, gentlemen! I observe you have business in hand, and I am perhaps intruding; I will retire. There are moments when one does not like to be disturbed: I know it by experience."
Saying these words, Cuchillo showed his intention of crossing a second time the green inclosure of the valley of gold, when Bois-Rose"s rough voice arrested him.
"Stay here, as you value the salvation of your soul, master Cuchillo,"
said the hunter.
"The giant may have heard of my intellectual resources," thought Cuchillo. "They have need of me. After all, I would rather go shares with them than get nothing; but without doubt this Golden Valley is bewitched. You allow, master hunter," he continued, addressing the Canadian, and feigning a surprise he did not feel at the aspect of his chief, "I have a--"
An imperious gesture from Fabian cut short Cuchillo"s demand.
"Silence!" he said, "do not distract the last thought of a Christian who is about to die."
We have said that a poignard planted in the ground no longer cast a shadow.
"My lord of Mediana," added Fabian, "I ask you once again, by the name we bear, by your honour, and the salvation of your soul, are you innocent of my mother"s murder?"
To this lofty interrogation, Don Antonio replied without relaxing his haughty demeanour--
"I have nothing to say, to my peers alone I allow the right of judgment.
Let my fate and yours be accomplished."
"G.o.d sees and hears me," said Fabian. Then taking Cuchillo aside: "A solemn sentence has been pa.s.sed upon this man," said he to him. "We, as the instruments of human justice in this desert, command you to be his executioner. The treasures contained in this valley will remunerate you for undertaking this terrible duty. May you never commit a more iniquitous act!"
"One cannot live through forty years without having a few little peccadilloes on one"s conscience, Don Tiburcio. However, I shall not the less object to being an executioner; and I am proud to know that my talents are estimated at their real value. You promise, then, that all the gold of this valley shall be mine?"
"All--without excepting the smallest particle."