LEGENDS OF THE CITY OF MEXICO
that he did not in the least know how he knew it. What alone he could be sure of, he said, was that in his heart he did know that Don Gómez had keen killed on the previous evening in that bad manner; and he very stoutly asserted that the truth of what he told would be clear to Don Luis, and to everybody, when the news of the killing of Don Gómez had had time to get to Mexico in the ordinary way.
And then Gil Pérez—having answered all of the Viceroy's questions which he could answer, and having said all that he had to say—stood quite at his ease before the Viceroy: with his feet firmly planted, and his right hand on his hip, and his right arm akimbo—and so waited for whatever might happen to be the next turn.
Well, Señor, the one thing of which anybody really could be sure in this amazing matter—and of which, of course, everybody was sure—was that the devil was at both the bottom and the top of it; and, also, there seemed to be very good ground for believing that Gil Pérez was in much closer touch with the devil than any good Christian—even though he were an old soldier, and not much in the way of Chris-
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