Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/22

20 "Did you kill him, then, you wretch?" cried the monk.

"I sat down in the shade on the pavement, with my face to the door. I pitied the poor fellow, was quite discouraged, and slept at my post. The creaking of a door awoke me from my slumbers; a man came out. I said to myself then that my word of honor had been given, and my feelings of compassion must be crushed. I arose. A second after, I was on the traces of the unknown. The sound of a piano came stealing from the window, which was now closed. 'Poor girl!' said I, 'your lover has seen his last hour, and you are playing!' I struck—the man fell!"

Perico stopped and sighed.

"Had grief dimmed my sight?" said he, after a short silence. "The rays of the moon fell full upon the face of the poor fellow. It was not my man. I had done my duty, however; I had been paid to kill a man. I had killed him. And my conscience quieted on this score, I set about cutting off a lock of hair from the head of the unknown, in order to convince my employer that I had fulfilled my mission. 'All men's hair is of the same color,' said I to myself. I was again deceived; the man I had killed was an Englishman, and had hair red as a ripe pimenta. The handsome cavalier still lived. Chagrined at my disappointment, I blasphemed the holy name of God, and that is what I accuse myself of, holy father."

Perico beat his breast, while the Franciscan showed him the blackness of the latter crime of which he was guilty, passing very slightly over the former, for the life of a man, an English heretic above all, is of very little importance in the eyes of the least enlightened class of the Mexican people, of which the monk and