“Do not touch this felon with your clean hands,” warned the stranger, with a sternness that was tempered with gentleness.

“Who are you, senor?” the girl insisted.

“Can’t you guess?” broke out Tom Reade, wonderingly.  “Senorita Francesca, I helped take care of this man while he was ill in our cook tent.  In his fever I heard some words fall from his lips that started me to wondering.  But the other day I beheld this gentleman gazing upon you from a distance.  In his eyes, as he looked at you, Senorita, I saw a light that I had never seen in the eyes of this manacled brute.  Then my guess was turned to knowledge!”

“Then, Senor Reade,” begged the girl, “who is this man who would hold me back from my—­”

“Tell her, sir,” Tom urged the stranger.

“Child,” said the latter, with wonderful gentleness and tenderness, “I am the real Don Luis Montez—­your father!”

“Then who is he?” cried Francesca, pointing to the handcuffed Mexican, who had sunk upon a chair looking more dead than alive.

“His true name,” said the stranger, “is Paulo Rabasco.  He was born of good family, but was always dissolute and criminal.  Once he was my friend, I am ashamed to say; at least, I believed myself his.  We traveled, once, in a part of Mexico in which we were both strangers.  While there Rabasco became engaged in a budding revolution, that was quickly nipped by the central government.  In my efforts to shield my supposed friend from the consequences of supposed rebellion, I myself became suspected.  In the night Rabasco stole my papers, putting his own in my pocket.  When the police came they searched us both.  I was believed to be Rabasco, and this scoundrel insisted that I was.  The papers in our respective pockets seemed to prove it.  The papers in mine connected me with the intended rebellion.  A swift military trial, and within a few hours I was on my way to serve a life sentence of imprisonment in Yucatan.

“Rabasco, the self-asserted Don Luis, was turned loose.  We looked not unlike in those days.  Rabasco, as I have since learned, grew a beard.  Then he went back to my home.  My wife had died within a few days.  Most of the old servants had gone.  Rabasco, the unutterable scoundrel, set himself up as Don Luis Montez.  He imposed on the nurse, and took her away with my infant child whom I had never seen after she was three months old.  Rabasco went to the United States as soon as he had established a flimsy title to my modest property.  In after years he returned, an older and more successful impostor.  Yet he feared to live on my estate, dreading that some day his treachery might be discovered.  So, still calling himself Don Luis Montez, this scoundrel sold my estate and took my child away to other parts of Mexico.  My estate was a modest one.  On that foundation this fellow has been building a larger fortune—­but fate has overtaken him at last.  There are still friends of mine alive who will help me to unmask this scoundrel and prove him Paulo Rabasco.  He never would have been known, had I not, after many years, escaped from Yucatan.  I did not dare proclaim myself at once, for fear of being arrested as Paulo Rabasco and sent back to Yucatan.  But now I no longer fear.  I am Don Luis Montez.  I shall prove it without difficulty at last.”