Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/348

 looking from one to the other of the two young men, "whose arrow was it that struck that villain down?"

Juan stepped forward. He was not an assuring figure, his appearance more in keeping with those who had come in violence than one who had intervened as a friend. The scars of his face were hidden by his thick-growing beard; his hair was in disorder on his forehead, he was dressed in the rough garb that he lately had worn in the shops and mill.

"Is this act to be regarded as a service to be commended, Governor de Arrillaga, or a crime to be condemned?" Juan asked.

"The arrow saved my life," the governor returned, his voice calm, his manner unmoved. "Does a man condemn such a service? Juan Molinero, I would reward the man whose hand despatched that arrow in the measure of his service to me, if it lay within my power. Let him speak without fear."

"It was Cristóbal, excellency."

"Excellency, it was Juan."

The two men spoke together, as if they had rehearsed the declaration many times, so readily do the words of generous abnegation spring from the lips of friends. Each of them stepped forward a little, as if in haste to lodge his information first in the governor's ears, hands put out in earnest appeal for credence of statements so impossibly at variance.