The jeweler dug in the ground and from time to time the lantern illuminated his face, on which were not now the blue goggles that so completely disguised him.  Basilio shuddered:  that was the same stranger who thirteen years before had dug his mother’s grave there, only now he had aged somewhat, his hair had turned white, he wore a beard and a mustache, but yet his look was the same, the bitter expression, the same cloud on his brow, the same muscular arms, though somewhat thinner now, the same violent energy.  Old impressions were stirred in the boy:  he seemed to feel the heat of the fire, the hunger, the weariness of that time, the smell of freshly turned earth.  Yet his discovery terrified him—­that jeweler Simoun, who passed for a British Indian, a Portuguese, an American, a mulatto, the Brown Cardinal, his Black Eminence, the evil genius of the Captain-General as many called him, was no other than the mysterious stranger whose appearance and disappearance coincided with the death of the heir to that land!  But of the two strangers who had appeared, which was Ibarra, the living or the dead?

This question, which he had often asked himself whenever Ibarra’s death was mentioned, again came into his mind in the presence of the human enigma he now saw before him.  The dead man had had two wounds, which must have been made by firearms, as he knew from what he had since studied, and which would be the result of the chase on the lake.  Then the dead man must have been Ibarra, who had come to die at the tomb of his forefathers, his desire to be cremated being explained by his residence in Europe, where cremation is practised.  Then who was the other, the living, this jeweler Simoun, at that time with such an appearance of poverty and wretchedness, but who had now returned loaded with gold and a friend of the authorities?  There was the mystery, and the student, with his characteristic cold-bloodedness, determined to clear it up at the first opportunity.

Simoun dug away for some time, but Basilio noticed that his old vigor had declined—­he panted and had to rest every few moments.  Fearing that he might be discovered, the boy made a sudden resolution.  Rising from his seat and issuing from his hiding-place, he asked in the most matter-of-fact tone, “Can I help you, sir?”

Simoun straightened up with the spring of a tiger attacked at his prey, thrust his hand in his coat pocket, and stared at the student with a pale and lowering gaze.

“Thirteen years ago you rendered me a great service, sir,” went on Basilio unmoved, “in this very place, by burying my mother, and I should consider myself happy if I could serve you now.”

Without taking his eyes off the youth Simoun drew a revolver from his pocket and the click of a hammer being cocked was heard.  “For whom do you take me?” he asked, retreating a few paces.

“For a person who is sacred to me,” replied Basilio with some emotion, for he thought his last moment had come.  “For a person whom all, except me, believe to be dead, and whose misfortunes I have always lamented.”