De Garcia hesitated, stroking his peaked beard, then answered: 'I am
loth to tell it because it is a tale of error for which I have often
sorrowed and done penance. Yet I will speak for fear you should think
worse of me than I deserve. This man has some cause to mislike me,
since to be frank, when I was younger than I am to-day and given to
the follies of youth, it chanced that in England I met his mother, a
beautiful Spanish lady who by ill fortune was wedded to an Englishman,
this man's father and a clown of clowns, who maltreated her. I will be
short; the lady learned to love me and I worsted her husband in a duel.
Hence this traitor's hate of me.'

I heard and thought that my heart must burst with fury. To all his
wickedness and offences against me, de Garcia now had added slander of
my dead mother's honour.

'You lie, murderer,' I gasped, tearing at the ropes that bound me.

'I must ask you to protect me from such insult, general,' de Garcia
answered coldly. 'Were the prisoner worthy of my sword, I would ask
further that his bonds should be loosed for a little space, but my
honour would be tarnished for ever were I to fight with such as he.'

'Dare to speak thus once more to a gentleman of Spain,' said Cortes
coldly, 'and, you heathen dog, your tongue shall be dragged from you
with red-hot pincers. For you, Sarceda, I thank you for your confidence.
If you have no worse crime than a love affair upon your soul, I think
that our good chaplain Olmedo will frank you through the purgatorial
fires. But we waste words and time. This man has the secret of the
treasure of Guatemoc and of Montezuma. If Guatemoc and his nobles will