accumulating facts that day by day had silently spoken of lawlessness
and peril. Three years, his father had just said; well, that explained
how it was that no suspicions had ever awakened until after he had
completed his education and returned home from his travels. But since
then a child must have noted that something was wrong: the grim,
sinister faces of the men, constantly on guard, as though the old
_hacienda_ were in a state of siege; the altered disposition of his
father, always given to gloomy moods, but lately doubly silent and
saturnine, full of strange savagery and smouldering fire. Yes, somewhere
in the back of his mind he had known the whole, shameful truth; had
known the purpose of those silent, stealthy excursions, and equally
silent returns,--and more than once the broken heads and bandaged arms
that coincided so oddly with some new tale of a daring hold-up that
he was sure to hear of, the next time that he chanced to ride into
Monterey. For three years, young Ramerrez had known that sooner or later
he would be facing such a moment as this, called upon to make the choice
that should make or mar him for life. And now, for the first time he
realised why he had never voiced his suspicions, never questioned, never
hastened the time of decision,--it was because even now he did not know
which way he wished to decide! He knew only that he was torn and racked
by terrible emotions, that on one side was a mighty impulse to disregard
the oath he had blindly taken and refuse to do his father's bidding;
and on the other, some new and unguessed craving for excitement and
danger, some inherited lawlessness in his blood, something akin to the
intoxication of the arena, when the thunder of the bull's hoofs rang in
his ears. And so, when the old man's lips opened once more, and shaped,
almost inaudibly, the solemn words:

"You have sworn,--" the scales were turned and the son bowed his head in
silence.