The spectacle offered by this scene was very painful. Old Don Juan, bareheaded, was striving to appear calm, but the heavy tears that fell on his grey moustache were a flagrant contradiction of the resignation which he affected. Behind the old man's studied countenance could be discerned an immense grief, which was betrayed by the very violence of the stoicism which he displayed. Choked by sobs, the colonel remained dumb to his father's exhortations.
"Have you understood what I demand of you?" Don Juan again said to his son.
"Yes, father," the latter at length replied. "Oh!" he added, "why was I not here to defend them? but the scoundrels kept me back."
"Who did?" Don Pedro asked; "have you not come from Santiago?"
"No, general; and it was within an ace that I never saw the light of day again."
"In the environs of Talca, while I was travelling post haste in the hope of joining you on the road, I was made prisoner by an Indian party, whose presence I was far from suspecting. My lancero was put to death after one of their barbarous ceremonies, and I was preparing to undergo the same fate, when this night I was suddenly set at liberty by the order of an Indian chief of the name of Tahi-Mari, whom I did not see."
"Tahi-Mari!" the old general immediately interrupted him. "What! there is still a man bearing that name, and you owe your liberty to him? Oh! he must, in that case, be meditating some treachery, for a Tahi-Mari would have killed you, in order to enjoy the sight of your agony."
"My father, calm yourself," Don Juan remarked.
"General," Leon said at length, who had paid great attention to the young man's words, "whatever may be the motive which caused the man who liberated the colonel to act so, we must take advantage of the help which he is able to give us, in order to escape from the wood."
"My daughters! my daughters!" the old gentleman exclaimed, "must I then give up all hope of seeing them again?"
"Oh!" said Don Pedro, "we must follow up the track of these accursed Indians, or--no, we will hasten to Valdivia, and once arrived there, I will organize an expedition."
"That is not the way to find them again," Leon remarked, anxiously.
"Nothing--except that you will lose your time in sending an army against the Indians: the two Señoras are at this moment secure among some tribe that will sedulously keep them at a distance from the spot where your troops are fighting."