“‘Senor officer,’ she said, ’I am weak, I tremble.  It is an insensate fear.’  And indeed her lips did tremble while she tried to smile, glancing at the beginning of the narrow path which was not so dangerous after all.  ’I am afraid I shall drop the child.  Gaspar saved your life, you remember. . . .  Take her from me.’

“I took the child out of her extended arms.  ’Shut your eyes, senora, and trust to your mule,’ I recommended.

“She did so, and with her pallor and her wasted, thin face she looked deathlike.  At a turn of the path where a great crag of purple porphyry closes the view of the lowlands, I saw her open her eyes.  I rode just behind her holding the little girl with my right arm.  ’The child is all right,’ I cried encouragingly.

“‘Yes,’ she answered, faintly; and then, to my intense terror, I saw her stand up on the foot-rest, staring horribly, and throw herself forward into the chasm on our right.

“I cannot describe to you the sudden and abject fear that came over me at that dreadful sight.  It was a dread of the abyss, the dread of the crags which seemed to nod upon me.  My head swam.  I pressed the child to my side and sat my horse as still as a statue.  I was speechless and cold all over.  Her mule staggered, sidling close to the rock, and then went on.  My horse only pricked up his ears with a slight snort.  My heart stood still, and from the depths of the precipice the stones rattling in the bed of the furious stream made me almost insane with their sound.

“Next moment we were round the turn and on a broad and grassy slope.  And then I yelled.  My men came running back to me in great alarm.  It seems that at first I did nothing but shout, ’She has given the child into my hands!  She has given the child into my hands!’ The escort thought I had gone mad.”

General Santierra ceased and got up from the table.  “And that is all, senores,” he concluded, with a courteous glance at his rising guests.

“But what became of the child.  General?” we asked.

“Ah, the child, the child.”

He walked to one of the windows opening on his beautiful garden, the refuge of his old days.  Its fame was great in the land.  Keeping us back with a raised arm, he called out, “Erminia, Erminia!” and waited.  Then his cautioning arm dropped, and we crowded to the windows.

From a clump of trees a woman had come upon the broad walk bordered with flowers.  We could hear the rustle of her starched petticoats and observed the ample spread of her old-fashioned black silk skirt.  She looked up, and seeing all these eyes staring at her stopped, frowned, smiled, shook her finger at the General, who was laughing boisterously, and drawing the black lace on her head so as to partly conceal her haughty profile, passed out of our sight, walking with stiff dignity.