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206 his hand you saw nailed to the wall in the grand square of Guanajuato. I must now tell you what became of Felipe. The providential recognition of the victim and his assassin was soon noised abroad, and a few hours afterward a band of alguazils appeared to arrest the miner who had stabbed Osorio. Unluckily, on that day Felipe had quitted his work sooner than ordinary. I do not know by what fatal mistake he had been pointed out as the murderer of Osorio; perhaps it was an additional token of good-heartedness on that caitiff's part at any rate, the alguazils came to seize him. The victorious combatant had escaped, and I need not tell you that this mortal enemy of Osorio's was no other than the young man whom he had ill used, and who was a witness of the crime he had committed on the Rio Atotonilco. Had Felipe remained under ground, the alguazils would not have ventured into the inner workings of the mine, for the miners would not have suffered any injury to be inflicted on a comrade in their fueros. The alguazils perceived the young man in one of the courts of the mine buildings, and immediately set off in pursuit. Felipe saw he was lost; but he resolved to die a miner's death, and not suffer himself to be dishonored by the touch of the bailiffs. Having arrived at the brink of this very shaft quite out of breath, 'I will not be insulted as if I were a vile lépero,' he cried; 'a miner is more than man; he is the instrument whom God delights to employ!' Then, with pale face and gleaming eyes, he leaped over the balustrade surrounding the shaft, and disappeared in the black gulf which now yawns beneath your feet."

The miner paused, and the light of his torch grew dim. High above our heads, at the mouth of the