All the gentlemen withdrew into a side room, where the priest imparted his tragic intelligence. There was terrible anxiety, since the farming gentlemen had left their homesteads at the mercy of their peons thus denounced as treacherous.
"Well, Señores caballeros," said Benito, "since you look to me, I say with our norteamericano (Oliver) that, under such circumstances, the determination we are driven into is the best, I have four hundred peons on this farm. Of the lot, I can rely on three hundred, for one reason and another. I know the bulk of them as I do my own children. Against the hundred, or near a hundred and fifty, since some off strange plantations have flocked here, ostensibly for the junketing, we can pit my gentlemen friends, our relations. Each of them is the value of five or six wild Indians. You see, gentlemen, I rate you very low! Now you require rest, a change of dress--."
"No, no," said the Englishman and his guide with one breath.
"Pardon me, a short rest is requisite. By that time I shall have made my preparation, and then we may put the finishing touches on our plan of battle."
"And doña Dolores?" queried Mr. Gladsden.
"My daughter has gone to inform her that we have the honour and pleasure, at last," he said, reproachfully, "to see under the roof always bound to shelter him, our foremost of friends and benefactors. After your repose, doña Dolores will have the honour to receive you."
The Englishman and his companion were led away separately by servants bearing silver lamps. The former was conducted through several corridors into a chamber, where the steward ordered another massive silver lamp on a table to be lit. Whilst a third peon held the lamp up on high, the other two noiselessly and rapidly prepared a bath of rosewater in the next room. During their preparations, two others arrived in haste with a choice of clothes, the underlinen very fine, and from the first Paris houses.
The room was quite large, having two small windows and one glazed door -opening into a garden. On the whitened walls were pictures in gold frames, such as are painted in a mechanical way for Northern dealers to send in quantity to New Orleans, Santa Fe, and Mexico, for sale by torchlight. They represented, after good and popular masters, scenes of religion, battle, hunting, history, &c, and were hung without order. At all events, they regaled the sight by their vivid colour. In one corner was a folding sleeping chair, on which were thrown splendid skins and furs and fine blankets, to be arranged as the sleeper fancied. The furniture was completed by a massive mahogany centre table, a square table against the wall near the chairbed, two openwork armchairs, and some Indian wickerwork footstools. There was a pedestal of marble for a religious image, but the statue had been removed to figure in the hall devoted to the ceremony of the Angelito.