Page:Infernal secret, or, The invulnerable Spaniard.pdf/9

 poor wretch, who was somewhat revived, and thus continued :—"Skulking from the city where my brother will this morning be broken on the wheel alive, I encountered a signor, nobly dressed. I was perishing for bread and I fired upon him with an aim that never once has failed in twenty years, but the ball fell harmless to the earth. I rushed upon him, and seized some property he bore about him, but he held me with an iron grasp. My mortal powers were paralyzed, and I could only utter cries for mercy. “None, none, wretch," he cried, "unless with thine own blood thou signest a compact to—Oh, I dare not, cannot utter what—Here Isidora rushed forward, and with an energetic shriek, exclaimed, "say on, say on, for heavens and all our safeties sake." The poor departing victim opened his half-closed eyes, and faintly uttered, " I cannot, they are words before unheard by human ears. I refused his terms." Here the poor wretch entered into convulsions and died. The corpse was born away and the Marquis about to follow, when Rosa, a domestic belonging to Donna Isidora, rushed in to say the stranger was at the feet of her mistress, and had nearly frightened half of the family out of their senses by his sudden appearance." The Marquis resolved on an immediate interview and explanation with Montilla. Accordingly, he requested Rosa to step back, and say he awaited a conference with the stranger in the picture room; but hardly had the girl departed from the chamber by the right-hand door, before Figaro, an old domestic of the house, entered by the left, to say the stranger had been seen by him at the rack beside the brother of the miserable victim who had just expired, and that on a sudden, the condemned malefactor was released from the wheel by the mysterious powers of the stranger, and neither of them were to be found by the