ble Don Tomas Verduzco, since you speak so in his presence."
I looked at the man thus denounced to me, and whom I now beheld for the first time. Imagination placed before me the bleeding body of Don Jaime, his agony, his last moments, and his happy future, all cut off in an instant by the knife of the man before me.
"Ah! you are Don Tomas Verduzco—" I could not finish. A sort of faintness came over me, and, without accounting to myself for what I was about to do, I cocked one of my pistols. At the click of the lock the stranger's face became livid, for Mexicans of the lower classes, who will not wince at the glitter of a knife-blade, tremble at the sight of a fire-arm in a European hand. He never stirred, however. Fuentes threw himself between us.
"Gently, Señor! gently, Cascaras! how you take the customs of the country!"
"The deuce take that Planillas," said the stranger, with a forced laugh; "he is always playing off some joke or other. But the idea of passing me off as Don Tomas is too absurd. Has your lordship any interest, then, in this Don Tomas?"
My passion appeared to me ridiculous, and passed away as by enchantment.
"I do not even know him," I replied, somewhat confusedly, but with all my former coolness. "I can not tell how he has got mixed up in my affairs; but I think I owe it to my safety to show no mercy to such assassins when chance throws them in my way."
The stranger muttered some unintelligible words. I thought the opportunity a good one to get rid of my new friend Desiderio, whose companionship was becoming somewhat burdensome to me, so I saluted the
