“Tell me!  Which one?” he whispered.

“Both!”

O’Reilly recoiled; a spasm distorted his chalky face.  He began to shake weakly, and his fingers plucked aimlessly at each other.

Lopez took him by the arm.  “Try to control yourself,” said he.  “Sit here while I try to tell you what little I know.  Or, would it not be better to wait awhile, until you are calmer?” As the young man made no answer, except to stare at him in a white agony of suspense, he sighed:  “Very well, then, as you wish.  But you must be a man, like the rest of us.  I, too, have suffered.  My father”—­ Lopez’s mustached lip drew back, and his teeth showed through—­ “died in the Laurel Ditch at Cabanas.  On the very day after my first victory they shot him—­an old man, Christ!  It is because of such things that we Cubans fight while we starve—­that we shall continue to fight until no Spaniard is left upon this island.  We have all faced something like that which you are facing now—­our parents murdered, our sisters and our sweethearts wronged. ...”

O’Reilly, huddled where he had sunk upon the bench, uttered a gasping, inarticulate cry, and covered his face as if from a lash.

“I will tell you all I know—­which isn’t much.  Esteban Varona came to me soon after he and his sister had fled from their home; he wanted to join my forces, but we were harassed on every side, and I didn’t dare take the girl—­no woman could have endured the hardships we suffered.  So I convinced him that his first duty was to her, rather than to his country, and he agreed.  He was a fine boy!  He had spirit.  He bought some stolen rifles and armed a band of his own—­which wasn’t a bad idea.  I used to hear about him.  Nobody cared to molest him, I can tell you, until finally he killed some of the regular troops.  Then of course they went after him.  Meanwhile, he managed to destroy his own plantations, which Cueto had robbed him of.  You knew Cueto?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Esteban put an end to him after a while; rode right up to La Joya one night, broke in the door, and macheted the scoundrel in his bed.  But there was a mistake of some sort.  It seems that a body of Cobo’s Volunteers were somewhere close by, and the two parties met.  I have never learned all the details of the affair, and the stories of that fight which came to me are too preposterous for belief.  Still, Esteban and his men must have fought like demons, for they killed some incredible number.  But they were human—­they could not defeat a regiment.  It seems that only one or two of them escaped.”

“Esteban?  Did he—­”

Colonel Lopez nodded; then he said, gravely:  “Cobo takes no prisoners.  I was in the Rubi hills at the time, fighting hard, and it was six weeks before I got back into Matanzas.  Naturally, when I heard what had happened, I tried to find the girl, but Weyler was concentrating the pacificos by that time, and there was nobody left in the Yumuri; it was a desert.”