“I wonder where General Bezan keeps himself when off duty?”

“Why, brother?”

“Because I have called there twice, and have not seen him yet.”

“Twice!”

“Yes.”

“You know it is but a very few days since he arrived here, brother Ruez, and he must be very busy.”

“Probably,” answered Ruez, stealing a glance towards his sister.

“His present duty must engage a large portion of his time, I suppose.”

“O, yes,” said the boy, laughing, “just about one quarter as much of his time as was demanded of him when he was a lieutenant in General Harero’s division.”

“By-the-by, Ruez, they say the general is very ill of some chance wounds.”

“The general deserves all he got, beyond a doubt, and there is little fear but that he will recover fast enough.  He’s not one of the sort that die easily.  Fortune spares such as he is to try people’s temper, and annoy humanity.”

“But is he decidedly better?” asked Isabella, with some interest.

“Yes, the surgeon reports him out of danger.  Yesterday he was in a fever from his wounds.  I can’t conceive how he got them, and no one seems to know much about it.”

“There’s Carlo and father, on the Plato; good-by, sister I’m going to join them.”

CHAPTER XVII.

The assassin.

The apartment where General Harero was confined to his bed by the severe wounds he had received, presented much such an aspect as Lorenzo Bezan’s had done, when in the early part of this story the reader beheld him in the critical state that the wounds he received from the Montaros on the road had placed him.  It was dark and gloomy then.  The same surgeon who had been so faithful a nurse to our hero, was now with the wounded officer.  Notwithstanding the excitement of his patient’s mind, he had succeeded in quieting him down by proper remedies, so as to admit of treating him properly for his wounds, and to relieve his brain, at least in part, from the excitement of feeling that a spirit of revenge had created there.

A knock was heard at the door just at the moment when we would have the reader look with us into the apartment, and the surgeon admitted a tall, dark person, partly enveloped in a cloak.  It was evening; the barracks were still, and the gloom of the sick room was, if possible, rendered greater by the darkness that was seen from the uncurtained window.  At a sign from his patient the surgeon left him alone with the new comer, who threw himself upon a camp-stool, and folding his arms, awaited the general’s pleasure.  In the meantime, if the reader will look closely upon the hard lineaments of his face, the heavy eyebrow, the profusion of beard, and the cold-blooded and heartless expression of features, he will recognize the game man whom he has once before met with General Harero, and who gave him the keys by which he succeeded in making a secret entrance to Lorenzo Bezan’s cell in the prison before the time appointed for his execution.  It was the jailor of the military prison.