Part 56

"You are to challenge him, with swords or pistols, or else--or else----" And she looked at his teeth.

"Woman, I've never handled----"

Doña Victorina let him go no farther; with a sublime movement she snatched out his teeth, threw them in the dust, and trampled them under her feet. The doctor almost crying, the doctora pelting him with sarcasms, they arrived at the house of Captain Tiago. Linares, who was talking with Maria Clara, was no little disquieted by the abrupt arrival of his cousins. Maria, amid the pillows of her fauteuil, was not less surprised at the new physiognomy of her doctor.

"Cousin," said Doña Victorina, "you are to go and challenge the alférez this instant; if not----"

"Why?" demanded the astonished Linares.

"You are to go and challenge him this instant; if not, I shall say here, and to everybody, who you are."

"Doña Victorina!"

The three friends looked at each other.

"The alférez has insulted us. The old sorceress came down with a whip to assault us, and this creature did nothing to prevent it! A man!"

"Hear that!" said Sinang regretfully. "There was a fight, and we didn't see it!"

"The alférez broke the doctor's teeth!" added Doña Victorina.

Captain Tiago entered, but he wasn't given time to get his breath. In few words, with an intermingling of spicy language, Doña Victorina narrated what had passed, naturally trying to put herself in a good light.

"Linares is going to challenge him, do you hear? Or don't let him marry your daughter. If he isn't courageous, he doesn't merit Clarita."

"What! you are going to marry this gentleman?" Sinang asked Maria, her laughing eyes filling with tears. "I know you are discreet, but I didn't think you inconstant."

Maria Clara, white as alabaster, looked with great, frightened eyes from her father to Doña Victorina, from Doña Victorina to Linares. The young man reddened; Captain Tiago dropped his head.

"Help me to my room," Maria said to her friends, and steadied by their round arms, her head on the shoulder of Victorina, she went out.

That night the husband and wife packed their trunks, and presented their account--no trifle--to Captain Tiago. The next morning they set out for Manila, leaving to the pacific Linares the rôle of avenger.

XXXIX.

THE OUTLAWED.

By the feeble moonlight that penetrates the thick foliage of forest trees, a man was making his way through the woods. His movement was slow but assured. From time to time, as if to get his bearings, he whistled an air, to which another whistler in the distance replied by repeating it.

At last, after struggling long against the many obstacles a virgin forest opposes to the march of man, and most obstinately at night, he arrived at a little clearing, bathed in the light of the moon in its first quarter. Scarcely had he entered it when another man came carefully out from behind a great rock, a revolver in his hand.

"Who are you?" he demanded with authority in Tagalo.

"Is old Pablo with you?" asked the newcomer tranquilly; "if so, tell him Elias is searching for him."

"You are Elias?" said the other, with a certain respect, yet keeping his revolver cocked. "Follow me!"

They penetrated a cavern, the guide warning the helmsman when to lower his head, when to crawl on all fours. After a short passage they arrived at a sort of room, dimly lighted by pitch torches, where twelve or fifteen men, dirty, ragged, and sinister, were talking low among themselves. His elbows resting on a stone, an old man of sombre face sat apart, looking toward the smoky torches. It was a cavern of tulisanes. When Elias arrived, the men started to rise, but at a gesture from the old man they remained quiet, contenting themselves with examining the newcomer.

"Is it thou, then?" said the old chief, his sad eyes lighting a little at sight of the young man.

"And you are here!" exclaimed Elias, half to himself.

The old man bent his head in silence, making at the same time a sign to the men, who rose and went out, not without taking the helmsman's measure with their eyes.