which, he wrote, would be not surprising in a man of such antecedents.  Gaspar Ruiz heard of it.  His rage flamed up, and the woman ever by his side knew how to feed it with perfidious words.  I do not know whether really the Supreme Government ever did—­as he complained afterwards—­send orders for his arrest.  It seems certain that the Civil Governor began to tamper with his officers, and that Gaspar Ruiz discovered the fact.

“One evening, when the Governor was giving a tertullia, Gaspar Ruiz, followed by six men he could trust, appeared riding through the town to the door of the Government House, and entered the sala armed, his hat on his head.  As the Governor, displeased, advanced to meet him, he seized the wretched man round the body, carried him off from the midst of the appalled guests, as though he were a child, and flung him down the outer steps into the street.  An angry hug from Gaspar Ruiz was enough to crush the life out of a giant; but in addition Gaspar Ruiz’ horsemen fired their pistols at the body of the Governor as it lay motionless at the bottom of the stairs.”

X

“After this—­as he called it—­act of justice, Ruiz crossed the Rio Blanco, followed by the greater part of his band, and entrenched himself upon a hill.  A company of regular troops sent out foolishly against him was surrounded, and destroyed almost to a man.  Other expeditions, though better organized, were equally unsuccessful.

“It was during these sanguinary skirmishes that his wife first began to appear on horseback at his right hand.  Rendered proud and self-confident by his successes, Ruiz no longer charged at the head of his partida, but presumptuously, like a general directing the movements of an army, he remained in the rear, well mounted and motionless on an eminence, sending out his orders.  She was seen repeatedly at his side, and for a long time was mistaken for a man.  There was much talk then of a mysterious white-faced chief, to whom the defeats of our troops were ascribed.  She rode like an Indian woman, astride, wearing a broad-rimmed man’s hat and a dark poncho.  Afterwards, in the day of their greatest prosperity, this poncho was embroidered in gold, and she wore then, also, the sword of poor Don Antonio de Leyva.  This veteran Chilian officer, having the misfortune to be surrounded with his small force, and running short of ammunition, found his death at the hands of the Arauco Indians, the allies and auxiliaries of Gaspar Ruiz.  This was the fatal affair long remembered afterwards as the ‘Massacre of the Island.’  The sword of the unhappy officer was presented to her by Peneleo, the Araucanian chief; for these Indians, struck by her aspect, the deathly pallor of her face, which no exposure to the weather seemed to affect, and her calm indifference under fire, looked upon her as a supernatural being, or at least as a witch.  By this superstition the prestige and authority of Gaspar Ruiz amongst these