"How strangely things come to pass in this world," said Tom Bartelot, in a low voice. "So this is a son of the old hermit we buried in that lonely islet of the South Sea."
"Strange, indeed. We should speak to him about that while he can understand us."
"Barradas," said Bartelot, "your name is Pedro Barradas, I believe?"
"Yes," replied Pedro, opening his large, black, bloodshot eyes, and surveying the speaker inquiringly and with a sad earnestness.
"Yes, senores; or Spanish Mexican, which you please," said he, sighing wearily.
"From Orizaba, in La Vera Cruz--Orizaba, near the Rio Blanco?"
"Yes," replied Pedro, while something of native suspicion crept suddenly over his pale face.
"Oh, my mother!" he exclaimed in an indescribable voice, "what of her?"
"She was named Mariquita Escudero, a woman of the Puebla de Perote?" said Morley.
A convulsive spasm passed over the features of Pedro, and with an effort he replied, in a low voice:
"_Mia madre ha muerto_" (My mother is dead).
"We know that she died in the Barranca Secca."
"And who are you who know all this?" asked Pedro, rallying his energies; "or how came you to know it?"
"Through him whom you killed," replied Morley.
A gleam of malevolence flashed from Pedro's black eyes; but remembering, perhaps, the cold hand that was already on the pulses of his heart, he groaned, muttered, and crossed himself.
"Demonio! senores, speak not of my father."
"Because I never knew him; but my mother, my poor mother, who loved her boys so well, so tenderly," he faltered, in a broken voice, while writhing in his bed.
"From Hawkshaw I learned the terrible story of your mother's fate and the crime of your brother Zuares, in the Barranca Secca," said Morley, who looked with deep interest on the strange workings of the mind exhibited by the expressive visage of the dying ruffian, whose sole human weakness seemed to be a strong love for the memory of his mother.
"_Mia madre! mia madre!_" said the once strong man, in a voice that became touching, while tears welled up into his eyes, long, long unused to such a moisture. "Oh, senores, bad, vile, cruel, wicked as you deem me, at this terrible hour, when well-nigh under weigh for--for--_where?_--it may be hell!--when I think of _her_--of the only human being who ever loved me--my heart swells with the old pang that was so keen, so very keen at first, on that awful evening in the Barranca Secca, and my memory goes back to the happier years beyond. I feel myself again a little boy and seem to hear her gentle voice calling me--Pedrillo--_el muchacho Pedrillo_--the same little boy who served at the altar of San Jago, who waked up in the winter nights and wept for his mother, and thought her dear, dear face the fondest, the sweetest, and the fairest under heaven--yes, fairer and kinder even than that of the blessed Madonna which hung in San Jago de Chili. _Mia madre ha muerto!_" he repeated, some four or five times, with incoherent fondness.