It chanced that but one couple was dancing.  Whether they had been sent there by advice of Agricola is not certain.  Snatching a tambourine from a bystander as he entered, the stranger thrust the male dancer aside, faced the woman and began a series of saturnalian antics, compared with which all that had gone before was tame and sluggish; and as he finally leaped, with tinkling heels, clean over his bewildered partner’s head, the multitude howled with rapture.

Ill-starred Bras-Coupe.  He was in that extra-hazardous and irresponsible condition of mind and body known in the undignified present as “drunk again.”

By the strangest fortune, if not, as we have just hinted, by some design, the man whom he had once deposited in the willow bushes, and the woman Clemence, were the very two dancers, and no other, whom he had interrupted.  The man first stupidly regarded, next admiringly gazed upon, and then distinctly recognized, his whilom driver.  Five minutes later the Spanish police were putting their heads together to devise a quick and permanent capture; and in the midst of the sixth minute, as the wonderful fellow was rising in a yet more astounding leap than his last, a lasso fell about his neck and brought him, crashing like a burnt tree, face upward upon the turf.

“The runaway slave,” said the old French code, continued in force by the Spaniards, “the runaway slave who shall continue to be so for one month from the day of his being denounced to the officers of justice shall have his ears cut off and shall be branded with the flower de luce on the shoulder; and on a second offence of the same nature, persisted in during one month of his being denounced, he shall be hamstrung, and be marked with the flower de luce on the other shoulder.  On the third offence he shall die.”  Bras-Coupe had run away only twice.  “But,” said Agricola, “these ‘bossals’ must be taught their place.  Besides, there is Article 27 of the same code:  ’The slave who, having struck his master, shall have produced a bruise, shall suffer capital punishment’—­a very necessary law!” He concluded with a scowl upon Palmyre, who shot back a glance which he never forgot.

The Spaniard showed himself very merciful—­for a Spaniard; he spared the captive’s life.  He might have been more merciful still; but Honore Grandissime said some indignant things in the African’s favor, and as much to teach the Grandissimes a lesson as to punish the runaway, he would have repented his clemency, as he repented the momentary truce with Agricola, but for the tearful pleading of the senora and the hot, dry eyes of her maid.  Because of these he overlooked the offence against his person and estate, and delivered Bras-Coupe to the law to suffer only the penalties of the crime he had committed against society by attempting to be a free man.

We repeat it for the credit of Palmyre, that she pleaded for Bras-Coupe.  But what it cost her to make that intercession, knowing that his death would leave her free, and that if he lived she must be his wife, let us not attempt to say.