"Ay!" cried Najara, with singular bitterness, "I have heard of that too. You were seen talking with her in the garden. You will play chamberer with Cortes! ay, and rival too! Pho, canst thou not be at peace? Meddle with the general's fancy. Why that were enough to hang thee. I had some soft thoughts of thee; but everything shows thou art unworthy. Farewell; think of these things no more; but repent and make your peace with heaven."
So saying, the hunchback flung out of the room, and securing the thick door of plank, Juan was again left to his meditations.
Then followed another period of silence and dejection, in which the prisoner wasted away as much in body as in spirit, becoming so listlessly indifferent to everything, that he no longer betrayed any desire to draw Najara into conversation, nor even to meet the advances which his jailer now often made. The thought of escaping from confinement, perhaps, never entered his mind; for, had he been even less resigned to his fate, the strict watch kept over him, and the condition of his prison, added to his apparent friendlessness, must have been enough to banish all such thoughts. His chamber was neither dark nor damp, but made strong by its bulky door, barred on the outside, and by windows, high above the floor, so very narrow that no human being could hope to pass through them.
Narrow as they were, however, it was the jailer's custom to examine them very closely each morning; a degree of vigilance that Juan had, in the earlier days of captivity, remarked with some surprise. He became acquainted with Najara's object at last. One morning, he was roused out of his stupefaction by a harsh exclamation from his jailer, and looking up, he beheld him take from the floor, immediately under one of the loopholes, what seemed a slip of paper, tied to a little stick, which appeared, some time during the night, to have been thus thrust into the prison. What were its contents he never could divine; for Najara had no sooner cast his eyes over it, than mingling a laugh of satisfaction at its miscarriage with some natural compassion for the profound wretchedness which had sealed the ears and eyes of the prisoner, he immediately departed with the prize.