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Don Luis soon won the affection of his daughter, and the two were wonderfully happy together. Rabasco, the impostor, was sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude. On his way to begin serving his sentence he broke away from the military guard, and was shot to death. Dr. Carlos Tisco died, of fever, within six months of the time of the real Don Luis's arrival.
There are still friends of mine alive who will help me to unmask this scoundrel and prove him Paulo Rabasco. He never would have been known, had I not, after many years, escaped from Yucatan. I did not dare proclaim myself at once, for fear of being arrested as Paulo Rabasco and sent back to Yucatan. But now I no longer fear. I am Don Luis Montez. I shall prove it without difficulty at last."
In the night Rabasco stole my papers, putting his own in my pocket. When the police came they searched us both. I was believed to be Rabasco, and this scoundrel insisted that I was. The papers in our respective pockets seemed to prove it. The papers in mine connected me with the intended rebellion.
Rabasco, the unutterable scoundrel, set himself up as Don Luis Montez. He imposed on the nurse, and took her away with my infant child whom I had never seen after she was three months old. Rabasco went to the United States as soon as he had established a flimsy title to my modest property. In after years he returned, an older and more successful impostor.
The true Don Luis Montez did establish his rights. He secured the estate built by Rabasco on the looted Montez fortune. The money paid Rabasco for the mining property was easily recovered through the courts and turned over to the rightful Don Luis. Then the Americans secured the property at the original figure.
"Child," said the latter, with wonderful gentleness and tenderness, "I am the real Don Luis Montez your father!" "Then who is he?" cried Francesca, pointing to the handcuffed Mexican, who had sunk upon a chair looking more dead than alive. "His true name," said the stranger, "is Paulo Rabasco. He was born of good family, but was always dissolute and criminal.
A swift military trial, and within a few hours I was on my way to serve a life sentence of imprisonment in Yucatan. "Rabasco, the self-asserted Don Luis, was turned loose. We looked not unlike in those days. Rabasco, as I have since learned, grew a beard. Then he went back to my home. My wife had died within a few days. Most of the old servants had gone.
Once he was my friend, I am ashamed to say; at least, I believed myself his. We traveled, once, in a part of Mexico in which we were both strangers. While there Rabasco became engaged in a budding revolution, that was quickly nipped by the central government. In my efforts to shield my supposed friend from the consequences of supposed rebellion, I myself became suspected.
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