By nightfall his head was fevered, his hands clammily cold. At the usual hour the officer of the guard came in. The new one was Zapato. He was surly and irritable from a debauch of the previous night, and said loudly as he entered the door:—
"Is this our ogre? Bah! For a _maravedi_ I would pull his teeth. Let us have a look at his fastenings."
The other officer spoke a word in a low tone, evidently of warning, and laid his hand upon his companion’s arm. Zapato shook him off roughly. "Furies!" he retorted. "Dost think to frighten me? _Loco_ or not, I’ll see to his irons. Here, guard, the lantern."
Cristoval’s nervousness left him in an instant, and he set his teeth. _Por Dios!_ the man who should discover his work with the file should never live to announce it. As Zapato approached, holding the lantern aloft, scowling with swollen eyes, Cristoval rose slowly and stood watching his advance with still alertness. The unsteady lantern cast a fitful light over his rugged features, and the officer looked into a face whose haggardness was intensified by the uncertain shadows,—cheeks sunken and drawn by confinement and anxiety, and from their dark orbits a pair of eyes gleaming with menacing steadiness into Zapato’s. The latter hesitated, peering uncertainly through the gloom, then stepped back a pace, his hand on his sword. The other officer seized him by the arm and drew him without much resistance toward the door. Zapato looked back over his shoulder.
"The man _is_ mad for a surety! We’ll let some one else look after his fetters," and he laughed uneasily and went out. Cristoval smiled grimly and seated himself to wait for Pedro.
Four long hours,—he knew from the change of sentinels outside the door, which was made twice. At last, the welcome voice. Pedro was apparently in unusual spirits, for his words were pitched high and he talked volubly, now rapidly in Spanish, now with dignity in Latin. Would he never be done? Presently he was singing. Fiends! Will he not hurry? But listen! His words sound thick, with pauses suspiciously like hiccoughs. At length the door opens.
"Is—is—the (hic)—man mad, sayst thou? Say, rather, ’_Faenum habet in cornu!_’ Lat—Latin, _compadre_. Meaneth, he hath hay on (hic) his horns—P—p— (hic) Pliny. M—more stately way of expressing it, my dear (hic). Let us—see!"