Reinaldo, hot with excitement and thirst for further vengeance, uttered a shriek of rage and sprang upon him.  Estenega saw the gleam of a knife and flung Chonita aside, catching the driving arm, the fury of his heart in his muscles.  Reinaldo had the soft muscles of the cabellero, and panted and writhed in the iron grasp of the man who forgot that he grappled with the brother of a woman passionately loved, remembered only that he rejoiced to fight to the death the man who had ruined his life.  Reinaldo tried to thrust the knife into his back; Estenega suddenly threw his weight on the arm that held it, nearly wrenching it from its socket, snatched the knife, and drove it to the heart of his enemy.

Then the hot blood in his body turned cold.  He stood like a stone regarding Chonita, whose eyes, fixed upon him, were expanded with horror.  Between them lay the dead body of her brother.

He turned with a groan and sat down on a fallen log, supporting his chin with his hand.  His profile looked grim and worn and old.  He stared unseeingly at the ground.  Chonita stood, still looking at him.  The last act of her brother’s life had been to lay the foundation of her lover’s ruin; his death had completed it:  all the South would rise did the slayer of an Iturbi y Moncada seek to rule it.  She felt vaguely sorry for Reinaldo; but death was peace; this was hell in living veins.  The memory of the world beyond the forest grew indistinct.  She recalled her first dream and turned in loathing from the bloodless selfishness of which it was the allegory.  Superstition and tradition slipped into some inner pocket of her memory, there to rattle their dry bones together and fall to dust.  She saw only the figure, relaxed for the first time, the profile of a man with his head on the block.  She stepped across the body of her brother, and, kneeling beside Estenega, drew his head to her breast.

THE END