They had never seen each other before their casual encounter in the road to San Lucar, and yet they seemed to have known each other for ages, and now only to have met again after a long parting.
Singular to say, the same effect was produced on both at the same moment, without calculation or reservation.
What we have asserted is so true, that Don Estevan, notwithstanding the innate prudence of his character, had not hesitated to confide to Stoneheart, on the spur of the moment, the history of his master, or, to speak more correctly, his benefactor. He had recounted this history in all its details, without disguising anything, or omitting a title, induced to act as he did by the secret presentiment which apprised him that he had found a man worthy of sharing the burden of this important secret.
The course of this tale will furnish us with still stronger proofs of the singular confidence these two men had instantly felt for each other.
The sun was setting in a flood of purple and gold behind the snowy crests of the lofty and jagged mountains of the Sierra Madre, when Don Estevan ceased speaking.
The landscape assumed that garb of placid melancholy in which it clothes itself at the approach of eve; the birds came flying in countless flocks, to nestle, twittering, under the leafy boughs of the grand old trees. _Vaqueros_ and _peones_, galloping in all directions, mustered the cattle, and drove them towards the _hacienda_; and in the distance appeared a camp of _arrieros_, whose watch fires already began to tinge the rapidly darkening sky with a ruddy glow.
"And now," resumed Don Estevan, "having acquired as intimate a knowledge as my own of the secrets of the family with whom chance has brought you into contact, what do you intend to do?"
"First, and before all a single word," answered Stoneheart.
"Say on; you must indeed have many things to confide to me in your turn."
"Not so many as you think. You already know as much of my life as I do myself; that is to say, almost nothing. But that is not the question between us at present."
"What can it be, then?" said Don Estevan, unable to repress his curiosity.
"I am about to tell you. Surely you have not told me this long and interesting tale with the sole purpose of satisfying a curiosity I never exhibited; there must be some other motive in your thoughts, and I think I have guessed it. Don Estevan Diaz, two bold men, bound to each other as closely as the ivy and the oak, with thoughts running in the same channel, with but one will between them,--two such men are mighty; for the one forms the complement to the other, and what each alone would not dare to essay, the two will undertake without hesitation, and be almost certain to succeed, however hazardous and rash their projects may seem. Are you of the same way of thinking?"