"What is it, gentlemen? What do you want?" he asked.
"The cipher! the cipher!" exclaimed Benito, mad with grief--"the
cipher of the document."
"Do you know it, then?" shouted the judge.
"No, sir," said Manoel. "But you?"
"Nothing! nothing!"
"Nothing?" gasped Benito, and in a paroxysm of despair he took a
knife from his belt and would have plunged it into his breast had not
the judge and Manoel jumped forward and managed to disarm him.
"Benito," said Jarriquez, in a voice which he tried to keep calm, "if
you father cannot escape the expiation of a crime which is not his,
you could do something better than kill yourself."
"What?" said Benito.
"Try and save his life!"
"How?"
"That is for you to discover," answered the magistrate, "and not for
me to say."
CHAPTER XVI
PREPARATIONS
ON THE FOLLOWING day, the 30th of August, Benito and Manoel talked
matters over together. They had understood the thought to which the
judge had not dared to give utterance in their presence, and were
engaged in devising some means by which the condemned man could
escape the penalty of the law.
Pages:
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435