"Do you know who I am?"

"Yes; I know now that you are a brute."

He pushed the bully roughly aside and went into his room. As traced on
the excited brain of our unfortunate friend at this moment, his plan of
action might be summed up briefly and definitely as follows: To break
Caballuco's head without loss of time; then to take leave of his aunt in
severe but polite words which should reach her soul; to bid a cold adieu
to the canon and give an embrace to the inoffensive Don Cayetano;
to administer a thrashing to Uncle Licurgo, by way of winding up the
entertainment, and leave Orbajosa that very night, shaking the dust from
his shoes at the city gates.

But in the midst of all these mortifications and persecutions the
unfortunate young man had not ceased to think of another unhappy being,
whom he believed to be in a situation even more painful and distressing
than his own. One of the maid-servants followed the engineer into his
room.

"Did you give her my message?" he asked.

"Yes, senor, and she gave me this."

Rey took from the girl's hand a fragment of a newspaper, on the margin
of which he read these words:

"They say you are going away. I shall die if you do."