“Late in the evening Gaspar Ruiz rode up with an escort, to their camp fires, bringing along with him a mule loaded with cases of wine.  He had come, he said, to drink a stirrup cup with his English friends, whom he would never see again.  He was mellow and joyous in his temper.  He told stories of his own exploits, laughed like a boy, borrowed a guitar from the Englishmen’s chief muleteer, and sitting cross-legged on his superfine poncho spread before the glow of the embers, sang a guasso love-song in a tender voice.  Then his head dropped on his breast, his hands fell to the ground; the guitar rolled off his knees—­and a great hush fell over the camp after the love-song of the implacable partisan who had made so many of our people weep for destroyed homes and for loves cut short.

“Before anybody could make a sound he sprang up from the ground and called for his horse.

“‘Adios, my friends!’ he cried.  ’Go with God.  I love you.  And tell them well in Santiago that between Gaspar Ruiz, colonel of the King of Spain, and the republican carrion-crows of Chile there is war to the last breath—­war! war! war!’

“With a great yell of ‘War! war! war!’ which his escort took up, they rode away, and the sound of hoofs and of voices died out in the distance between the slopes of the hills.

“The two young English officers were convinced that Ruiz was mad.  How do you say that?—­tile loose—­eh?  But the doctor, an observant Scotsman with much shrewdness and philosophy in his character, told me that it was a very curious case of possession.  I met him many years afterwards, but he remembered the experience very well.  He told me, too, that in his opinion that woman did not lead Gaspar Ruiz into the practice of sanguinary treachery by direct persuasion, but by the subtle way of awakening and keeping alive in his simple mind a burning sense of an irreparable wrong.  Maybe, maybe.  But I would say that she poured half of her vengeful soul into the strong clay of that man, as you may pour intoxication, madness, poison into an empty cup.

“If he wanted war he got it in earnest when our victorious army began to return from Peru.  Systematic operations were planned against this blot on the honour and prosperity of our hardly won independence.  General Robles commanded, with his well-known ruthless severity.  Savage reprisals were exercised on both sides and no quarter was given in the field.  Having won my promotion in the Peru campaign, I was a captain on the staff.  Gaspar Ruiz found himself hard pressed; at the same time we heard by means of a fugitive priest who had been carried off from his village presbytery and galloped eighty miles into the hills to perform the christening ceremony, that a daughter was born to them.  To celebrate the event, I suppose, Ruiz executed one or two brilliant forays clear away at the rear of our forces, and defeated the detachments sent out to cut off his retreat.  General Robles nearly had a stroke of apoplexy from rage.  He found another cause of insomnia than the bites of mosquitoes; but against this one, senores, tumblers of raw brandy had no more effect than so much water.  He took to railing and storming at me about my strong man.  And from our impatience to end this inglorious campaign I am afraid that all we young officers became reckless and apt to take undue risks on service.