Here the narrator paused. We were gradually approaching the mouth of the tiro, as I could discover by the light shining through the fog which still enveloped us; besides, the higher we got, the gulf below appeared more frightful.
"Do you know what distance we are from the bottom of the mine?" cried the guide. "Five and a half times the height of the towers of the Cathedral of Mexico."
To confirm this assertion, the miner drew from his belt a bundle of tow steeped in pitch, which he lighted at his torch. My strained eye could scarcely follow it as it slowly descended the pit like a globe of fire, till it gradually became small as one of those pale stars whose light scarcely reaches our earth. The voice of the miner, who again began his recital, turned my mind away from this reflection.
"From that night on which Osorio showed himself at the betrothal, Felipe was annoyed in a thousand ways by some unknown hand. On the very next day a blast was fired close to him, and covered him with fragments of rock; another time, when he was at a considerable height in one of the galleries, the rope to which he was suspended broke suddenly. These attempts being unsuccessful, vague assertions began to be bruited abroad, accusing poor Felipe as the thief who had stolen the monstrance. The brave young man was unwilling to recognize in Osorio the author of these foul calumnies. His eyes could hardly have been opened to the evidence that he was his calumniator, had not a young miner, who constantly watched Osorio, and who had lately entered the mine, apprised Felipe of the snares that were laid for him. Felipe resolved to seek his revenge. On the evening of the day on which the marriage was to take place (for all this had passed in less than a week), Osorio and Felipe met in the subterranean galleries of the mine. Felipe reproached Osorio with his treachery; Osorio replied by recounting the injuries he had suffered; the two then drew their knives. They were alone and almost naked; their _frazadas_ were their only shields. Osorio was the stronger, Felipe the more agile; the issue of the combat was therefore uncertain. All at once the young miner of whom I have spoken threw himself between the two combatants. 'Allow me,' said he, to Felipe, 'to punish this sacrilegious robber; my claim is anterior to yours.' Osorio gnashed his teeth and threw himself on the young miner, who stood grimly on his defense. The two then began to fight by the light of Felipe's torch, who had now become a spectator instead of an actor. With their frazadas wound round their left arms to hide their lunges, they commenced the combat. Perhaps the struggle would have been a long-protracted one had not the young miner adopted the following stratagem: he took such a position as allowed the covering on his arm to sweep the ground; then, behind the veil which masked his movements, he slipped his knife into his other hand, and gave his adversary a mortal wound. Osorio fell. He was drawn up by the grand shaft in a _costal_.[37] By chance a _padre_ happened to be passing the mine at that moment. They besought him to come and confess the wounded man; but scarcely had the dying man and the padre looked at one another than a cry of horror broke from the priest. The holy father had recognized in the wounded man the passer of the Rio Atotonilco. Osorio discovered in the priest the man he thought he had drowned, but who had escaped as if by a miracle from almost certain death. After that, by the investigations of justice, many mysteries were cleared up. The passer of the Rio Atotonilco, the sacrilegious robber, the miner of Zacatecas, and also of Rayas, were one and the same person. The garrote did justice to the crimes of this wretch, and it was 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_.