Release me. Now. Or I will bring you with me." "Take me," she said breathlessly. "If I am to go with you, I might as well die here with my father's murderer. I owe him nothing. Let me be yours in some way." He looked at her with eyes in which the last shred of doubt seemed to have perished. She had never seemed more desirable than now. His arms closed about her and, without a word, he carried her out of the room. CHAPTER XXXVII "AND WHAT THE DEAD HEAR US THROUGH" Through the deep gloom of the forest the girl's face was bent to Ramiro's, and his eyes rested upon the beautiful uplifted curve of her cheek. He knew that it was well to see a woman's face when he was dying, and though he was by now a man who had been brought face to face with the stark realities of life and death too often, it was not without emotion that he saw the light of a woman's love upon her face. It seemed to be a light from a better and nobler world, where he would be able to reach her in another, more beautiful life. He thought of Anina, whose face he had seen so sweet and innocent when he wandered into her chamber, but the recollection jarred upon him like the sudden jar of a discord in a glorious chord of music. All those thoughts that had lately been ever present with him died away. He could think only of the face of the girl, the great love of which he could feel it through the soft breath of the forest night, and the little words he had spoken, that for once had been truthfully, uttered and had been met by pure devotion in her answering eyes. All the manhood in his body and in his soul went forth to her in gratitude, love, and reverence. "He would have understood," she murmured. "He loved her as you do," he replied hoarsely. "He would have loved me if he had been in my place." "And I would have killed him," he said, as the words of his brother flashed across his mind, and the vision of the dying Ramon lifted itself again before him. "If he had lived, he would have shot me with his own hand, perhaps, as he would have shot any man who had gone to my country. I understand it now. But still he was my brother, and I must give him up. I would give up my life for your hand, but I cannot give up Ramon's memory, and you are dead to me--the world that has loved me is dead to me--I am in hell." "Do you know any more like this, Señor?" "Yes," he answered briefly. "Is it all dark, Señor?" "No. There is something that shines through it--something that I have been looking for for years. Anina is in it and so is my mother, and maybe some day I will meet them there, and find out whether they have found out the way to go through the blackness." "Tell me about your mother," she said. "I loved her," he replied, "I loved her very much. When I was a boy I tried to be like her--I could not help being so; when she died, though I was but a stripling, I knew that life was worthless to me. It was no wonder that my father felt as he did about her. He loved her with the romance of his fierce and lonely life." "I am sorry for your father," she said softly. "It is hard for him--hard for any man who sees a thing and knows it for what it is. Still I suppose that she was always a part of his life." "Why do you say it in that way? She had only lived for you." "He has always loved her, perhaps, because she died for him." She made no answer, and he went on without knowing it. "He was a young man when I knew him," he said, "but so great were his love and his genius that the great ones of the earth--the men he met in his youth--feared him, I think, though they thought themselves strong enough to be his masters. At any rate he died of poison, which had been meant for him, and the man who brought it to him, as I learned when I came here, had killed him, he said, to win Anina for his wife. I had loved her. He and I, father and son, have had the same enemy all the time. So I came to Spain, knowing that the man who had killed my father was my enemy, and was looking for me. To see what I could do for you." "For me," she whispered. "I could have died then. I could have been ready to go with you to the grave. I loved you--I loved you--you were my hero." "I used to remember all the love that I ever had from you, that I might be worthy of it." "And are you?" she asked. "I have given up all for it." "I thought so," she whispered softly, and for a moment he held her to him. Then he let her go and resumed his journey. They reached the mountain path and were able to follow it. The morning star shone in the heavens and the birds sang, and the sun rose, and the shadows lengthened; but Ramon had said nothing, and neither did Lazarus. The young man walked for many days over the mountains with the dumb American, till at length they came to a hut in the woods, set high up on a hill, where there was a small spring that bubbled up in a hollow among rocks. In the midst of it was a mossy seat, where he could sit and rest after walking a day's journey, or while he bathed his sore and bruised limbs in the pure water of the spring. The hut was roofless, the thatch that had made the roof gone with the roof; there were no windows, but the stone slabs that had made the floor were yet in place. The door was so low that Lazarus walked in with the ease of an alpine goat. It was a poor shelter indeed, yet they had come to the heights of the mountains, and there was no other place in the heavens, they said, where they were not seen or discovered, or where the snow and the cold were not less than they were here. Lazarus looked about him, and he sighed with delight. There was a great couch of moss in one corner, and through a gap in the rocks a portion of the day's light crept in, so that the room was filled with a soft and friendly light, for the sun never shone into it at its brightest, but the rain in passing was always intercepted by the bushes that grew about the cliff and hid it from the sight of those below. He turned and looked at the young man, who was preparing to bathe in the spring. "Do you know me now?" he said. "Yes, I know you," he replied. "And I am very glad that I do. For if I did not know you, I should fear for your life, Ramon, for I am a friend of Ramon Sandoval." "What do you know of Ramon Sandoval?" the man asked, and there was something in the inquiry that made Lazarus look down and make no reply. "I met him in the jungle when I was a young man," the American went on, "and he recognized me as one of his greatest enemies. In fact he shot me there. Now I have come to know what his heart was like--and you will also know." The two men walked out from the hut into the sunlit clearing, while they talked in whispers of the past, and Lazarus and Ramon stood together on the hillside. Lazarus spoke little, but he listened closely to all that the man had to tell, which was more than he had told to any one. "He knew," the other said, "that if I did not forget it, I should go mad, to see that there was only one possible way of life for me--to work for my king, whom God will bless and whom the world will not see die. So I came here, though it killed the life I had lived, and now that the King is dead I would go back to my own land, but I am crippled--I cannot walk." "They say that the mountains are like the heart," said Lazarus. "They make men strong, and they make men brave." "Yes, and they make men mad and kill them," Ramon said bitterly. "There is a valley somewhere in