walked directly towards the figure, and said, sharply, "Pereo!"

The figure came hesitatingly forward into the light of the grated
window. It was that of an old man, still tall and erect, though
the hair had disappeared from his temples, and hung in two or three
straight, long dark elf-locks on his neck. His face, over which
one of the bars threw a sinister shadow, was the yellow of a dried
tobacco-leaf, and veined as strongly. His garb was a strange
mingling of the vaquero and the ecclesiastic--velvet trousers, open
from the knee down, and fringed with bullion buttons; a broad red
sash around his waist, partly hidden by a long, straight chaqueta;
with a circular sacerdotal cape of black broadcloth slipped over
his head through a slit-like opening braided with gold. His
restless yellow eyes fell before the young girl's; and the stiff,
varnished, hard-brimmed sombrero he held in his wrinkled hands
trembled.

"You are spying again, Pereo," said Maruja, in another dialect than
the one she had used to her mother. "It is unworthy of my father's
trusted servant."

"It is that man--that coyote, Dona Maruja, that is unworthy of your
father, of your mother, of YOU!" he gesticulated, in a fierce
whisper. "I, Pereo, do not spy. I follow, follow the track of the
prowling, stealing brute until I run him down. Yes, it was I,
Pereo, who warned your father he would not be content with the half
of the land he stole! It was I, Pereo, who warned your mother that
each time he trod the soil of La Mision Perdida he measured the
land he could take away!" He stopped pantingly, with the insane
abstraction of a fixed idea glittering in his eyes.