He found the prisoner with both legs in fetters, handcuffed, and with the iron fork not yet removed from beneath his chin.  The cell was dark, only a scanty gleam of light passing into it from a loop-hole near the top of the wall.  “How goes it, sorry knave?” said the corregidor, as he entered.  “I would I had all the gipsies in Spain leashed here together to finish them all at once, as Nero would have beheaded all Rome at a single blow.  Know, thou thief, who art so sensitive on the point of honour, that I am the corregidor of this city, and come to know from thee if thy betrothed is a gitanilla who is here with the rest of you?”

Hearing this Andrew imagined that the corregidor had surely fallen in love with Preciosa; for jealousy is a subtle thing, and enters other bodies without breaking or dividing them.  He replied, however, “If she has said that I am her betrothed, it is very true; and, if she has said I am not her betrothed, she has also spoken the truth; for it is not possible that Preciosa should utter a falsehood.”

“Is she so truthful then?” said the corregidor.  “It is no slight thing to be so and be a gitana.  Well, my lad, she has said that she is your betrothed, but that she has not yet given you her hand; she knows that you must die for your crime, and she has entreated me to marry her to you before you die, that she may have the honour of being the widow of so great a thief as yourself.”

“Then, let your worship do as she has requested,” said Andrew; “for so I be married to her, I will go content to the other world, leaving this one with the name of being hers.”

“You must love her very much?”

“So much,” replied the prisoner, “that whatever I could say of it would be nothing to the truth.  In a word, senor corregidor, let my business be despatched.  I killed the man who insulted me; I adore this young gitana; I shall die content if I die in her grace, and God’s I know will not be wanting to us, for we have both observed honourably and strictly the promise we made each other.”

“This night then I will send for you,” said the corregidor, “and you shall marry Preciosa in my house, and to-morrow morning you shall be on the gallows.  In this way I shall have complied with the demands of justice and with the desire of you both.”  Andrew thanked him; the corregidor returned home, and told his wife what had passed between them.

During his absence Preciosa had related to her mother the whole course of her life; and how she had always believed she was a gipsy and the old woman’s grand-daughter; but that at the same time she had always esteemed herself much more than might have been expected of a gitana.  Her mother bade her say truly, was she very fond of Don Juan?  With great bashfulness and with downcast eyes she replied that, having considered herself a gipsy, and that she should better her condition by marrying a knight of Santiago, and one of such station as Don Juan de Carcamo, and having, moreover, learned by experience his good disposition and honourable conduct, she had sometimes looked upon him with the eyes of affection; but that as she had said once for all, she had no other will than that which her parents might approve.