Sometime during the afternoon the negro heard himself addressed through the window against the bars of which he leaned.  The speaker was Dona Isabel.  She had waited patiently until she knew he must be faint from exhaustion and then she had let herself into the room behind the grating, whence she could talk to him without fear of observation.

“Do you suffer, Sebastian?” she began in a tone of gentleness and pity.

“Yes, mistress.”  The speaker’s tongue was thick and swollen.

“La!  La!  What a crime!  And you the most faithful slave in all Cuba!”

“Yes, mistress.”

“Can I help you?”

The negro raised his head; he shook his body to rid himself of the insects which were devouring him.

“Give me a drink of water,” he said, hoarsely.

“Surely, a great gourdful, all cool and dripping from the well.  But first I want you to tell me something.  Come now, let us have an understanding with each other.”

“A drink, for the love of Christ,” panted the old man, and Dona Isabel saw how cracked and dry were his thick lips, how near the torture had come to prostrating him.

“I’ll do more,” she promised, and her voice was like honey.  “I’ll tell Pancho Cueto to unlock you, even if I risk Esteban’s anger by so doing.  You have suffered too much, my good fellow.  Indeed you have.  Well, I can help you now and in the future, or—­I can make your life just such a misery as it has been to-day.  Will you be my friend?  Will you tell me something?” She was close to the window; her black eyes were gleaming; her face was ablaze with greed.

“What can I tell you?”

“Oh, you know very well!  I’ve asked it often enough, but you have lied, just as my husband has lied to me.  He is a miser; he has no heart; he cares for nobody, as you can see.  You must hate him now, even as I hate him.”  There was a silence during which Dona Isabel tried to read the expression on that tortured face in the sunlight.  “Do you?”

“Perhaps.”

“Then tell me—­is there really a treasure, or—?” The woman gasped; she choked; she could scarcely force the question for fear of disappointment.  “Tell me there is, Sebastian.”  She clutched the bars and shook them.  “I’ve heard so many lies that I begin to doubt.”

The old man nodded.  “Oh yes, there is a treasure,” said he.

“God!  You have seen it?” Isabel was trembling as if with an ague.  “What is it like?  How much is there?  Good Sebastian, I’ll give you water; I’ll have you set free if you tell me.”

“How much?  I don’t know.  But there is much—­pieces of Spanish gold, silver coins in casks and in little boxes—­the boxes are bound with iron and have hasps and staples; bars of precious metal and little paper packages of gems, all tied up and hidden in leather bags.”  Sebastian could hear his listener panting; her bloodless fingers were wrapped tightly around the bars above his head.—­