“Well, brother, it seems that Captain Bezan has been liberated and pardoned, after all,” said Isabella, with a voice of assumed indifference.

“Yes, sister, but at a sad cost; for he has been banished to Spain.”

“How strange he was not shot, when so many fired at him.”

“Sister?”

“Well.”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“I think so, Ruez,” said Isabella, half smiling at the question of her brother.

“Well, it’s not so very wonderful, since I drew the bullets from the guns!”

And Ruez explained to her that he had secreted himself in the house, with the hope that something might turn up to save his friend even yet, and there he had found a chance to draw the bullets from the twelve muskets.  After he had told her, she threw her arms about his neck, and said: 

“You are a dear, good brother.”

“And for what, sister?”

“For saving Captain Bezan’s life; for otherwise he had been shot.”

“But why do you care so much about it, sister?” asked the boy, seriously.

“O, nothing, only-that is, you know, Ruez, we owe Captain Bezan so much ourselves for having hazarded his life for us all.”

Ruez turned away from his sister with an expression in his face that made her start; for he began to read his sister’s heart, young as he was, better than she knew it herself.  He loved Lorenzo Bezan so dearly himself-had learned to think so constantly of him, and to regard him with such friendly consideration, that no influence of pride could in the least affect him; and though he had sufficient penetration to pierce through the subject so far as to realize that his dearly loved friend regarded his sister with a most ardent and absorbing love, he could not exactly understand the proud heart of Isabella, which, save for its pride, would so freely return the condemned soldier’s affection.

Well, time passed on in its ever-varying round.  Lorenzo Bezan was on his way to Spain, and Isabella and her brother filling nearly the same round of occupation, either of amusement or self-imposed duty.  Occasionally General Harero called; but this was put a stop to, at last, by Ruez’s pertinently asking him one evening how he came to order the execution of Lorenzo Bezan to take place a full hour before the period announced in the regular sentence signed by the governor-general!

Ruez was not the first person who had put this question to him, and he felt sore about it, for even Tacon himself had reprimanded him for the deed.  Thus realizing that his true character was known to Don Gonzales and his family, he gave up the hope of winning Isabella Gonzales, or rather the hope of sharing her father’s rich coffers, and quietly withdrew himself from a field of action where he had gained nothing, but had lost much, both as it regarded this family, and, owing to his persecution of Captain Bezan, that of the army.