THE PUENTE DEL CLÉRIGO
grating; and while he was so engaged he saw Padre Don Juan coming home along the cause-way by the light of the stars. Then that wicked young man went to where the bridge was, and when the Padre was come to the bridge he sprang upon him and drove his dagger deep into his skull. The dagger was nailed so fast there, Señor, that he could not drag it loose again; and so he bundled the dead priest over the wall of the bridge and into the water with the dagger still sticking in the skull of him; and then he went his way to his home.
Not wishing to have it thought that he had committed that murder, Don Duarte did not go near Doña Margarita for almost a whole year. And then—because his love for her would not suffer him to wait away from her longer—he went in the night-time to meet her once more at her window; and he had in his heart the wicked purpose to make her come out to him, and then to carry her off.
That did not happen—and what did happen is a terrible mystery. All that is known about it is this: Very early in the morning the neighbors living thereabout found Don Duarte dead on the Bridge of the Cleric; and holding him
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