Three guards instantly seized him.
"Consider yourself a prisoner in the King's name," said the sergeant.
"For what ?" "They'll tell you over there.

We're forbidden to say." The youth reflected a moment and then, perhaps not wishing that the soldiers should discover his preparations for flight, picked up his hat, saying, "I'm at your service.

I suppose that it will only be for a few hours." "If you promise not to try to escape, we won't tie you the alferez grants this favor--but if you run--" Ibarra went with them, leaving his servants in consternation.
Meanwhile, what had become of Elias?
Leaving the house of Crisostomo, he had run like one crazed, without heeding where he was going.

He crossed the fields in violent agitation, he reached the woods; he fled from the town, from the light--even the moon so troubled him that he plunged into the mysterious shadows of the trees.

There, sometimes pausing, sometimes moving along unfrequented paths, supporting himself on the hoary trunks or being entangled in the undergrowth, he gazed toward the town, which, bathed in the light of the moon, spread out before him on the plain along the shore of the lake.