Three times he has striven to murder me.' 'Well, you have escaped and it is your hour now, Sarceda.

He says that he has a quarrel with you; what is it ?' De Garcia hesitated, stroking his peaked beard, then answered: 'I am loth to tell it because it is a tale of error for which I have often sorrowed and done penance.

Yet I will speak for fear you should think worse of me than I deserve.

This man has some cause to mislike me, since to be frank, when I was younger than I am to-day and given to the follies of youth, it chanced that in England I met his mother, a beautiful Spanish lady who by ill fortune was wedded to an Englishman, this man's father and a clown of clowns, who maltreated her.

I will be short; the lady learned to love me and I worsted her husband in a duel.
Hence this traitor's hate of me.' I heard and thought that my heart must burst with fury.