When
the man came, however, to say that the mule was in readiness, every
thing was forgotten but the feelings of the mother, and she hurried
off in deep and unsuppressed affliction.
We may as well add here the catastrophe of this tragical tale. From
information received by the Lieutenant, after his arrival in Madrid, it
appears that poor Pepe breathed his last about eight hours after the
attack, and long before his widowed mother could arrive to close the
eyes of her child. The mayoral lingered for about a week, and then
shared the fate of Pepe. The three robbers were detected and taken into
custody; two of them were townsmen, and all three acquaintances of Pepe,
whom they had doubtless murdered to prevent discovery. We ourselves
passed over the scene of the robbery between two and three years after
the event: there were two crosses to mark the bloody spot. The mayoral
and the zagal of our diligence, the successors of those who had been
murdered, pointed to the crosses with the _sang froid_ with which
Spaniards, from long habitude, contemplate mementos of the kind. The
mayoral showed the very place where his predecessor had been beaten to
death.
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