"Thank God! you are safe, dear friend!" Don Gregorio answered, he placed his thumb upon the wound; "what a fright you have given us!"
"What does all this mean?" said Don Tadeo, in a firmer voice; "tell me, Don Gregorio, what has happened?"
"Faith! it is all my fault," the latter replied. "This will teach me to choose my horses myself another time, and not leave it to a peon."
"Pray explain yourself, my friend; I do not understand you; I am so weak."
"Well you may be; you have had a terrible fall."
"Caspita! Do I think so? Ask these caballeros. A miracle has saved you!"
"It is very singular! I cannot recollect anything of what you speak. When we left our friends all at once, the storm broke out."
"That was it! and your recollection is correct. Your horse took fright at a flash of lightning and ran away. When we came up with you, you were lying senseless in a ravine."
"What you say must be true, for I feel bruised, and my whole frame seems weak and exhausted."
"That is it! But, I repeat, fortunately you are not wounded; only I thought it best to bleed you."
"I thank you; the bleeding has done me good, my head is not so hot, my ideas are more calm! Thank you, my friend," he added, taking his hand.
"Perhaps you are not strong enough yet to sit on horseback," he said.
"Yes, I assure you, my strength is completely restored; besides, time presses."
Saying these words, Don Tadeo rose, and asked for his horse. A soldier was holding it by the bridle. Don Tadeo examined it attentively. The poor animal was filthy; it looked as if it had literally been rolled in the mud. Don Tadeo knitted his brow; he could not make it out. Don Gregorio laughed in his sleeve; it was by his orders that, to mislead his friend, the horse had been put in this condition.
"I can but wonder," said Don Tadeo, "when looking at this poor beast, how we both escaped!"
"Is it not incomprehensible?" Don Gregorio replied; "we can none of us account for it."
"Let us hasten on, then;" and the troop set off at a gallop.
This time Don Tadeo and his friend rode side by side, talking as they went, in a low voice of the means to be taken to thwart the attempts of General Bustamente. Don Tadeo had recovered all his coolness. His ideas had again become clear. One man alone was a stranger to all we have related. This was Don Ramón Sandias. The poor senator, soaked with rain, terrified at the storm, and muffled in his cloak up to the eyes, seemed to live quite mechanically. He only wished for one thing, and that was to gain some place of shelter; so he kept on and on, without knowing what he did, or whether the others followed him or not. He arrived in this manner at Valdivia, and was about to pass on when he was stopped by a man who seized his bridle.