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Chata and Chinita

A Novel

BY

LOUISE PALMER HEAVEN

BOSTON

ROBERTS BROTHERS

1889

Copyright, 1889,

By Louise Palmer Heaven.

All rights reserved.

University Press:

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

CHATA AND CHINITA.

I.

On an evening in May, some forty years ago, Tio Pedro, the portero, or gate-keeper, of Tres Hermanos, had loosened the iron bolts that held back the great doors against the massive stone walls, and was about to close the hacienda buildings for the night, when a traveller, humbly dressed in a shabby suit of buff leather, urged his weary mule up the road from the village, and pulling off his wide sombrero of woven grass, asked in the name of God for food and shelter.

Pedro glanced at him sourly enough from beneath his broad felt-hat, gay with a silver cord and heavy tassels. The last rays of the setting sun flashed in his eyes, allowing him but an uncertain glimpse of the dark face of the stranger, though the shabby and forlorn aspect of both man and beast were sufficiently apparent to warn him from forcing an appearance of courtesy, and he muttered, grumblingly,—

“Pass in! Pass in! See you not I am in a hurry? God save us! Am I to stand all night waiting on your lordship? Another moment, friend, and the gate would have been shut. By my patron saint,” he added in a lower tone, “it would have been small grief to me to have turned the key upon thee and thy beast. By thy looks, Tia Selsa’s mud hut for thee, and the shade of a mesquite for thy mule, would have suited all needs well enough. But since it is the will of the saints that thou comest here, why get thee in.”

“Eheu!” ejaculated a woman who stood by, “what makes thee so spiteful to-night, Tio Pedro, as if the bit and sup were to be of thy providing? Thou knowest well enough that Doña Isabel herself has given orders that no wayfarer shall be turned from her door!”

“Get thee to the hand-mill, gossip!” cried the gatekeeper, angrily. “This new-comer will add a handful of corn to thy stint for grinding; he has a mouth for a gordo, believe me.”

The woman, thus reminded of her duty, hurried away amid the laughter of the idlers, who, lounging against the outer walls or upon the stone benches in the wide archway, exchanged quips and jests with Pedro, one by one presently sauntering away to the different courtyards within the hacienda walls or to their own homes in the grass-thatched village, above which the great building rose at once overshadowingly and protectingly.

The stranger, thus doubtfully welcomed, urged his mule across the threshold, throwing, as he entered, keen glances around the wide space between the two arches, and beyond into the dim court; and especially upon the rows of stuffed animals ranged on the walls, and upon the enormous snakes pendent on either side the inner doorway, twining in hideous folds above it, and even encircling the tawdry image of the Virgin and child by which the arch was surmounted. These trophies, brought in by the husbandmen and shepherds and prepared with no unskilful hands, gave a grim aspect to the entrance of a house where unstinted hospitality was dispensed, the sight of whose welcoming walls cheered the wayfarer across many a weary league,—it being the only habitation of importance to be seen on the extensive plain that lay within the wide circle of hills which on either hand lay blue and sombre in the distance. For a few moments, indeed, the western peaks had been lighted up by the effulgence of the declining sun; the last rays streamed into the vestibule as the traveller entered, then were suddenly withdrawn, and the gray chill which fell upon the valley deepened to actual duskiness in the court to which he penetrated.

Careless glances followed him, as he rode across the broad flagging, picking his way among the lounging herdsmen, who, leaning across their horses, were recounting the adventures of the day or leisurely unsaddling. He looked around him for a few moments, as if uncertain where to go; but each one was too busy with his own affairs to pay any attention to so humble a wayfarer. Nor, indeed, did he seem to care that they should; on the contrary, he pulled his hat still further over his brows, and with his dingy striped blanket thrown crosswise over his shoulder and almost muffling his face, followed presently a confused noise of horses and men, which indicated where the stables stood, and disappeared within a narrow doorway leading to an inner court.

Meanwhile, Tio Pedro, his hands on the gate, still stood exchanging the last words of banter and gossip, idly delaying the moment of final closure. Of all those human beings gathered there, perhaps no one of them appreciated the magnificent and solemn grandeur by which they were surrounded any more than did the cattle that lowed in the distance, or the horses that ran whinnying to the stone walls of the enclosures, snuffing eagerly the cool night air that came down from the hills, over the clear stream which rippled under the shadow of the cottonwood trees, across the broad fields of springing corn and ripening wheat, and through the deep green of the plantations of chile and beans and the scented orchards of mingled fruits of the temperate and torrid zones. For miles it thus traversed the unparalleled fertility of the Bajio, that Egypt of Mexico, which feeds the thousands who toil in her barren hills for silver or who watch the herds that gather a precarious subsistence upon her waterless plains, and which gives the revenues of princes to its lordly proprietors, who scatter them with lavish hands in distant cities and countries, and with smiling mockery dole the scant necessities of life to the toiling thousands who live and die upon the soil.

Many are these fertile expanses, which, entered upon through some deep and rugged defile, lie like amphitheatres inclosed by jagged and massive walls of brescia and porphyry, that rise in a thousand grotesque shapes above their bases of green,—at a near view showing all the varying shades of gray, yellow, and brown, and in the distance deep purples and blues, which blend into the clear azure of the sky. One of the most beautiful of such spots is that in which lay the hacienda or estates of the family of Garcia, and one of the most marvellously rich; for there even the very rocks yield a tribute, the mine of the Three Brothers—the “Tres Hermanos”—being one of those which at the Conquest had been given as a reward to the daring adventurer Don Geronimo Garcia. It was surrounded by rich lands, which unheeded by the earliest proprietors, later yielded the most important returns to their descendants. But at the time our story opens, the mines and mills of Tres Hermanos, though they added a picturesque element to the landscape, had become a source of perplexity and loss,—still remaining, however, in the opinion of their owners, a proud adjunct to the vast stretches of field and orchard which encircled them.

The mines themselves lay in the scarred mountain against which the reduction-works stood, a dingy mass of low-built houses and high adobe walls, from the midst of which ascended the great chimney, whence clouds of sulphurous smoke often rose in a black column against the sky. These buildings made a striking contrast to the great house, which formed the nucleus of the agricultural interests and was the chief residence of the proprietors, and whose lofty walls rose proudly, forming one side of the massive adobe square, which was broken at one corner by a box-towered church and on another by a flour-mill. The wheels of this mill were turned in the rainy season by the rapid waters of a mountain stream, which lower down passed through the beautiful garden, the trees of which waved above the fourth corner of the walls,—flowing on, to be almost lost amid the slums and refuse of the reduction-works a half-mile away, and during the nine dry months of the year leaving a chasm of loose stones and yellow sand to mark its course. Along the banks were scattered the huts of workmen, though, with strange perversity, the greater number had clustered together on a sandy declivity almost in front of the great house, discarding the convenience of nearness to wood and water,—the men, perhaps, as well as the women, preferring to be where all the varied life of the great house might pass before their eyes, while custom made pleasant to its inmates the nearness of the squalid village, with its throngs of bare-footed, half nude, and wholly unkempt inhabitants.

These few words of description have perhaps delayed us no longer than Tio Pedro lingered at his task of closing the great doors for the night, leaving however a little postern ajar, by which the tardy work-people passed in and out, and at which the children boisterously played hide-and-seek (that game of childhood in all ages and climes); and meanwhile, as has been said, the traveller found and took his way to the stables. Before entering, he paused a moment to pull the red handkerchief that bound his head still further over his bushy black brows, and to readjust his hat, and then went into the court upon which the stalls opened. Finding none vacant in which to place his mule, he tethered it in a corner of the crowded yard; and then, with many reverences and excuses, such as rancheros or villagers are apt to use, asked a feed of barley and an armful of straw from the “major-domo,” who was giving out the rations for the night.

“All in good time! All in good time, friend,” answered this functionary, pompously but not unkindly. “He who would gather manna must wait patiently till it falls.”

“But I have a real which I will gladly give,” interrupted the ranchero. “Your grace must not think I presume to beg of your bounty. I—”

“Tut! tut!” interrupted the major-domo; “dost think we are shop-keepers or Jews here at Tres Hermanos? Keep thy real for the first beggar who asks an alms;” and he drew himself up as proudly as if all the grain and fodder he dispensed were his own personal property. “But,” he added, with a curiosity that came perhaps from the plebeian suspicion inseparable from his stewardship, “hast thou come far to-day? Thy beast seems weary,—though as far as that goes it would not need a long stretch to tire such a knock-kneed brute.”

“I come from Las Vigas,” answered the traveller, doffing his hat at these dubious remarks, as though they were highly complimentary. “Saving your grace’s presence, the mule is a trusty brute, and served my father before me; but like your servant, he is unused to long journeys,—this being the first time we have been so far from our birthplace. Santo Niño, but the world is great! Since noon have my eyes been fixed upon the magnificence of your grace’s dwelling-place, and, by my faith, I began to think it one of the enchanted palaces my neighbor Pablo Arteaga, who travels to Guadalajara, and I know not where, to buy and sell earthenware, tells of!”

The major-domo laughed, not displeased with the homage paid to his person and supposed importance, and suffering himself to be amused by the villager’s unusual garrulity. Las Vigas he knew of as a tiny village perched among the cliffs of the defile leading from Guanapila, whence fat turkeys were taken to market on feast-days, when its few inhabitants went down to hear Mass, and to turn an honest penny. They were a harmless people, these poor villagers, and he felt a glow of charity as if warmed by some personal gift, as he said, “Take a fair share of barley and straw for thy beast, and when thou hast given it to him, follow me into the kitchen, and thou shalt not lack a tortilla, nor frijoles and chile wherewith to season it.”

“May your grace live a thousand years!” began the villager, when the major-domo interrupted him.

“What is thy name? So bold a traveller must needs have a name.”

“Surely,” answered the villager, gravely, “and Holy Church gave it to me. Juan—Juan Planillos, at your service.”

The major-domo started, laid his hand on the knife in his belt, then withdrew it and laughed. “Truly a redoubtable name,” he exclaimed; then, as they passed into another court over which the red light of charcoal fires cast a lurid glare, illuminating fantastically the groups of men who were crouching in various attitudes in the wide corridors, awaiting or discussing their suppers, “I hope thou wilt prove more peaceful than thy namesake: a very devil they say is he.”

The villager looked at him stupidly, and then with interest at the women who were doling from steaming shallow brown basins the rations of beans and pork with red pepper,—a generous portion of which, at a sign from the major-domo, was handed to the stranger, who looked around for a convenient spot to crouch and eat it.

The major-domo turned away abruptly, muttering, “Juan Planillos! Juan Planillos! a good name to hang by. What animals these rancheros are! Evidently he has never heard of the man that they say even Santa Anna himself is afraid of. Well, well, Doña Isabel, I have obeyed your commands! What can be the reason of this caprice for knowing the name and business of every one who enters her gates? In the old time every one might come and go unquestioned; but now I must describe the height and breadth, the sound of the voice, the length of the nose even, of every outcast that passes by.”

He disappeared within another of the seemingly endless range of courts, perhaps to discharge his duty of reporter, and certainly a little later, in company with other employees of the estate, to partake of an ample supper, and recount to Señor Sanchez the administrador, with many variations reflecting greatly on his own wit and the countryman’s stupidity, the interview he had held with the traveller from Las Vigas. Any variation in the daily record of a country life is hailed with pleasure, however trifling in itself it may be; and even Doña Feliz, the administrador’s grave mother, listened with a smile, and did not disdain to repeat the tale in her visit to her lady, Doña Isabel, which according to her usual custom she made before retiring for the night.

The apartments occupied by the administrador and his family were a part of those which had been appropriated to the use of the proprietors and rulers of this circle of homes within a home, which we have attempted to describe. The staircase by which they were reached rose, indeed, from an inferior court, but they were connected on the second floor by a gallery; and thus the inhabitants of either had immediate access to the other, although the privacy of the ruling family was most rigidly respected; while at the same time its members were saved from the oppression of utter isolation which their separation from the more occupied portions of the building might have entailed. This was now the more necessary, as one by one the gentlemen of the family had, for various reasons or pretexts, gone to the cities of the republic, where they spent the revenues produced by the hacienda in expensive living, and Doña Isabel Garcia de Garcia,—still young, still eminently attractive, though a widow of ten years standing,—was left with her young daughters, not only to represent the family and dispense the hospitality of Tres Hermanos, but to bear the burden of its management.

She was a woman who, perhaps, would scarcely be commiserated in this position. She was not, like most of her countrywomen, soft, indolent, and amiable, a creature who loves rather than commands. A searching gaze into the depths of her dark eyes would discover fires which seldom leapt within the glance of a casual observer. Seemingly cold, impassive, grave beyond her years, Doña Isabel wielded a power as absolute over her domains as ever did veritable queen over the most devoted subjects. Yet this woman, who was so rich, so powerful, upon the eve on which her bounty had welcomed an unknown pauper to her roof, was less at ease, more harassed, more burdened, as she stood upon her balcony looking out upon the vast extent and variety of her possessions, than the poorest peon who daily toiled in her fields.

Her daughters were asleep, or reading with their governess; her servants were scattered, completing the tasks of the day; behind her stretched the long range of apartments throughout which, with little attention to order, were scattered rich articles of furniture,—a grand piano, glittering mirrors, valuable paintings, bedsteads of bronze hung with rich curtains, services of silver for toilette and table,—indiscriminately mixed with rush-bottomed chairs of home manufacture, tawdry wooden images of saints, waxen and clay figures more grotesque than beautiful, the whole being faintly illumined by the flicker of a few candles in rich silver holders, black from neglect. Doña Isabel stood with her back to them all, caring for nothing, heeding nothing, not even the sense of utter weariness and desolation which presently like a chill swept through the vast apartments, and issuing thence, enwrapped her as with a garment.

She leaned against the stone coping of the window. Her tall, slender figure, draped in black, was sharply outlined against the wall, which began to grow white in the moonlight; her profile, perfect as that of a Greek statue unsharpened by Time yet firm as Destiny, was reflected in unwavering lines as she stood motionless, her eyes turned upon the walls of the reduction-works, her thoughts penetrating beyond them and concentrating themselves on one whom she had herself placed within,—who, successful beyond her hopes in the task for which she had selected him, yet baffled and harassed her, and had planted a thorn in her side, which at any cost must be plucked thence, must be utterly destroyed.

The hour was still an early one, though where such primitive customs prevailed it might well seem late to her when she left the balcony and retired to her room, which was somewhat separated from those of the other members of the family, though within immediate call. Soothed by the cool air of the night, the peace that brooded over village and plain, the solemn presence of the everlasting hills,—those voiceless influences of Nature which she had inbreathed, rather than observed,—her health and vigor triumphed over care, and she slept.

II.

Meanwhile, the moon had risen and was flooding the broad roofs and various courts of the great buildings with a silvery brilliancy, which contrasted sharply with the inky shadows cast by moving creatures or solid wall or massive column. While it was early in the evening, the sound of voices was heard, mingling later with the monotonous minor tones of those half-playful, half-pathetic airs so dear to the ear and heart of the Mexican peasantry; but as night approached, silence gradually fell upon the scene, broken only by the mutter or snore of some heavy sleeper, or the stamping of the horses and mules in their stalls.

The new-comer Juan Planillos, who had joined readily in jest and song,—though his wit was scarce bright enough, it seemed, to attract attention to the speaker (while absolute silence certainly would have done so),—at length, following the example of those around him, sought the shaded side of the corridor, and wrapping himself in his striped blanket lay down a little apart from the others, and was soon fast asleep.

Men who are accustomed to rise before or with the dawn sleep heavily, seldom stirring in that deep lethargy which at midnight falls like a spell on weary man and beast; yet it was precisely at that hour that Juan Planillos, like a man who had composed himself to sleep with a definite purpose to arise at a specified time, uncovered his face, raised himself on his elbow, and glancing first at the sky (reading the position of the moon and stars), threw then a keen glance at the prostrate figures around him. The very dogs—of which, lean and mongrel curs, there were many—like the men, fearing the malefic influences of the rays of the moon, had retired under benches, and into the farthest corners, and upon every living creature profound oblivion had fallen.

It was some minutes before Planillos could thoroughly satisfy himself on this point, but that accomplished, he rose to his feet, leaving the sandals that he had worn upon the brick floor, and with extreme care pushing open the door near which he had taken the precaution to station himself, passed into the first and larger court, which he had entered upon reaching the hacienda. As he had evidently expected, he found this court entirely deserted, although in the vaulted archway at the farther side he divined that the gate-keeper lay upon his sheepskin in the little alcove beside the great door, of which he was the guardian.

As he stepped into this courtyard, Juan Planillos paused to draw upon his feet a pair of thin boots of yellow leather, so soft and pliable that they woke no echo from the solid paving, and still keeping in the shadow, he crossed noiselessly to a door set deep in a carved arch of stone, and like one accustomed to its rude and heavy fastenings, deftly undid the latch and looked into the court upon which opened the private apartments of the family of Garcia. He stood there in the shadow of the doorway, still dressed, it is true, in the ranchero’s suit,—a soiled linen shirt open at the throat, over which was a short jacket of stained yellow leather, while trousers of the same, opening upon the outside of the leg to the middle of the thigh, over loose drawers of white cotton, were bound at the waist by a scarf of silk which had once been bright red; his blanket covered one shoulder; his brows were still circled by the handkerchief, but he had pushed back the slouching hat, and the face which he thrust forward as he looked eagerly around had undergone some strange transformation, which made it totally unlike that of the stolid mixed-breed villager who had talked with the major-domo a few hours before. Even the features of the face seemed changed, the heavy fleshiness of the ranchero had given place to the refinement and keenness of the cavalier. The bushy brows were unbent, there was intelligence and vivacity in his dark eyes, a half-mocking, half-anxious smile upon his lips, which utterly changed the dull and ignorant expression, and of the same flesh and blood made an absolutely new creation.

It was not curiosity that lighted the eyes as they glanced lingeringly around, scanning the low chairs and tables scattered through the corridor, resting upon the rose-entwined columns that supported it, and then upon the fountain in the centre of the court, which threw a slender column in the moonlight, and fell like a thousand gems into the basin which overflowed and refreshed a vast variety of flowering shrubs that encircled it. It was rather a look of pleased recognition, followed by a sarcastic smile, as if he scorned a paradise so peaceful. There was indeed in every movement of his well-knit figure, in the clutch of his small but sinewy hand upon the door, something that indicated that the saddle and sword were more fitting to his robust physique and fiery nature than the delights of a lady’s bower.

Nevertheless, he was about to enter, and had indeed made a hasty movement toward the staircase that led to the upper rooms, when an unexpected sound arrested him. Planillos drew back into the shadow and listened eagerly, scarce crediting the evidence of his senses; gradually he fell upon his knees, covering himself with his dingy blanket, transforming himself into a dull clod of humanity, which under cover of the black shadows would escape observation except of the most jealous and critical eye. Yet this apparent clod was for the time all eyes and ears. Presently the sound he had heard, a light tap on the outer door, was repeated; a shrill call like that of a wild bird—doubtless a pre-arranged signal—sounded, and in intense astonishment he waited breathlessly for what should further happen.

Evidently the gate-keeper was not unprepared, for the first wild note caused him to raise his head sleepily, and at the second he staggered from his alcove, muttering an imprecation, and fumbling in his girdle for the key of the postern. He glanced around warily, even going softly to places where the shadows fell most darkly; but finding no one, returned, and with deft fingers proceeded to push back noiselessly the bolts of the small door set in a panel of the massive one which closed the wide entrance. It creaked slowly upon its hinges, so lightly that even a bird would not have stirred in its slumbers, and a man cautiously entered. He had spurs upon his heels, and after effecting his entrance stooped to remove them, and Planillos had time and opportunity to see that he was not one of Pedro Gomez’s associates,—not one of the common people.

The midnight visitor was tall and slender, the latter though, it would seem, from the incomplete development of youth, rather than from delicacy of race. The long white hand that unbuckled his spurs was supple and large; his whole frame was modelled in more generous proportions than are usually seen in the descendants of the Aztecs or their conquerors.

“Ingles,” thought Planillos, using a term which is indiscriminately applied to English or Americans. “A man I dare vow it would be hard to deal with in fair fight!”

But evidently the Englishman, or American, was not there with any idea of contest; a pistol gleamed in his belt, but its absence would have been more noticeable than its presence,—it was worn as a matter of course. For so young a man, in that country where every cavalier native or foreign affected an abundance of ornament, his dress was singularly plain,—black throughout, even to the wide hat that shaded his face, the youthful bloom of which was heightened rather than injured by the superficial bronze imparted by a tropical sun.

Planillos had time to observe all this. Evidently the late-comer knew his ground, and had but little fear of discovery. “A bold fellow,” thought the watcher, “and fair indeed should be the Dulcinea for whom he ventures so much. It must be the niece of Don Rafael, or perhaps the governess—did I hear she was young?”

But further speculation was arrested by the movements of the stranger, who, after a moment’s parley with Pedro, came noiselessly but directly toward the door near which Planillos was lying.

Once within it, he paused to listen. Planillos expected him to make some signal, and to see him joined by a veiled figure in the corridor, but to his unbounded amazement and rage the intruder passed swiftly by the fountain, under the great trees of bitter-scented oleanders and cloying jasmine, and sprang lightly up the steps leading to the private apartments. His foot was on the corridor, when Planillos, light as a cat, leaped up the steep stair. His head had just reached the level of the floor above, when with an absolute fury of rage he caught the glimpse of a fair young face in the moonlight, and beheld the American in the embrace of a beautiful girl. Instinct, rather than recognition, revealed to his initiated mind the young heiress, Herlinda Garcia. Absolutely paralyzed by astonishment and rage, for one moment dumb, almost blinded, in the next he saw the closing of a heavy door divide from his sight the lovers whom he was too late to separate.

Too late? No! one blow from his dagger upon that closed door, one cry throughout the sleeping house and the life of the man who had stolen within would not be worth a moment’s purchase! It required all his strength of will, a full realization of his own position, to prevent Planillos from shouting aloud, from rushing to the door of Doña Isabel, to beat upon it and cry, “Up! up! look to your daughter! See if there be any shame like hers! see how your own child tramples upon the honor of which you have so proudly boasted!”

But he restrained himself, panting like a wild animal mad with excitement. The thought of a more perfect, a more personal revenge leaped into his mind, and silenced the cry that rose to his lips,—held him from rushing down to plunge his dagger into the heart of the false doorkeeper, completely obliterated even the remembrance of the purpose for which he had ventured into a place deemed so sacred, so secure! and sustained him through the long hour of waiting, the horrible intentness of his purpose each moment growing more fixed, more definitely pitiless.

For some time he stood rooted to the spot upon which he had made the discovery which had so maddened him, but at last he crouched in the shadow at the foot of the staircase; and scarcely had he done so, when the man for whom he waited appeared at the top. He saw him wave his hand, he even caught his whispered words, so acute were his senses: “Never fear, my Herlinda, all will be well. I will protect you, my love! In another week at most all this will be at an end. I shall be free to come and go as I will!”

“Free as air!” thought the man lying in the shadow, with grim humor, even as he grasped his dagger. Crouching beneath his blanket he had drawn from his brows the red kerchief. The veins stood black and swollen upon his temples as the foreigner, waving a last farewell, descended the stairs. He passed with drooping head, breathing at the moment a deep sigh, within a hand’s breadth of an incarnate fiend.

Ah, devoted youth! had thy guardian angel veiled her face that night? Oh, if but at the last moment thy light foot would wake the echoes and rouse the sleepers, already muttering in their dreams, as if conscious that the dawn was near. But nothing happened; the whole world seemed wrapped in oblivion as he bent over the gate-keeper, and with some familiar touch aroused him. He stooped to put on his spurs, as Pedro opened the postern, and instantly stepped forth, while the gate-keeper proceeded to replace the fastenings. But as the man turned nervously, with the sensation of an unexpected presence near him, he was absolutely paralyzed with dismay. A livid face, in which were set eyes of lurid blackness, looked down upon him with satanic rage. The bulk that towered over him seemed colossal. “Mercy! mercy!” he ejaculated. “By all the saints I swear—”

“Let me pass!” hissed Planillos in a voice scarce above a whisper, but which in its intensity sounded in the ears of Pedro like thunder. “Villain, let me pass!” and he cast from him the terrified gate-keeper as though he were a child, and rushed out upon the sandy slope which lay between the great house and the village. He was not a moment too soon. In the dim light he caught sight of the lithe figure of the foreigner, as he passed rapidly over the rough ground skirting the village, the better to escape the notice of the dogs, which, tired with baying the moon, had at last sunk to uneasy slumbers.

Planillos looked toward the moon, and cursed its rapid waning. The light grew so faint he could scarce keep the young man in sight, as he approached a tree where a dark horse was tied, which neighed as he drew near. Planillos clutched his dagger closer; would the pursued spring into his saddle, and thus escape, at least for that night? On the contrary, he lingered, leaning against his horse, his eyes fixed on the white walls of the house he had left. All unconscious of danger, he stood in the full strength of manhood, with the serene influences of Nature around him, his mind so rapt and tranced that even had his pursuer taken no precaution in making his approach from shrub to shrub, concealing his person as much as possible, he would probably have reached his victim unnoticed. Within call slept scores of fellow-men; behind him, scarce half a mile away, rose the walls and chimneys of his whilom home; not ten minutes before he had said, “I shall be as safe on the road as in your arms, my love!” He was absolutely unconscious of his surroundings, lost in a blissful reverie, when with irresistible force he was hurled to the ground; a frightful blow fell upon his side,—the heavens grew dark above him. Conscious, yet dumb, he staggered to his feet, only to be again precipitated to the earth; the dagger that at the moment of attack had been thrust into his bosom, was buried to the hilt; the blood gushed forth, and with a deep groan he expired.

All was over in a few moments of time. John Ashley’s soul, with all its sins, had been hurled into the presence of its Judge. The self-appointed avenger staggered, gasping, against the tree; an almost superhuman effort had brought a terrible exhaustion. Every muscle and nerve quivered; he could scarcely stand. Yet thrusting from him with his foot the dead body, he thirsted still for blood. “If I could but return and kill that villain Pedro,” he hissed; “if his accursed soul could but follow to purgatory this one I have already sent! But, bah! a later day will answer for the dog! Ah, I am so spent a child might hold me; but,” looking toward the mountains, “this horse is fresh and fleet. I shall be safe enough when the first beam of the morning sun touches your lover’s lips, Herlinda.”

The assassin glanced from his victim toward the house he had left, with a muttered imprecation; then, trembling still from his tremendous exertions, he approached the steed, which, unable to break the lariat by which it had been fastened, was straining and plunging, half-maddened, after the confusion of the struggle, by the smell of blood already rising on the air.

Planillos possessed that wonderfully magnetic power over the brute creation which is as potent as it is rare, and which on this occasion within a few moments completely dominated and calmed the fright and fury of the powerful animal, which he presently mounted, and which—though man and horse shook with the violence of excitement and conflict—he managed with the ease that denoted constant practice and superb horsemanship. With a last glance at the murdered man, whom the darkness that precedes the dawn scarce allowed him to distinguish from the shrubs around, he put spurs to the restive steed, and galloped rapidly away.

III.

It is not to be supposed that this bloody deed occurred entirely unsuspected. Pedro, the gate-keeper, lay half-stunned upon the stones where he had been cast by the man who called himself Planillos, and listened with strained ears to every sound. No indication of a struggle reached him, but his horrified imagination formed innumerable pictures of treacherous violence, in which one or the other of the men who had left him figured as the victim. He dared give no alarm; indeed, at first he was so unnerved by terror that he could neither stir nor speak. At length, after what appeared to him hours but was in reality only a few minutes, he heard the shrill neigh of the horse and the sound of rearing and plunging, followed by the dull thud of retreating footsteps and shrill whistles in challenge and answer from the watchmen upon the hacienda roof, who, however, took no further steps toward investigating what they supposed to be a drunken brawl which had taken place, almost out of hearing and quite out of sight, and which therefore, as they conceived, could in no wise endanger the safety or peace of the hacienda.

Their signals, however, served to arouse Pedro, who shaking in every limb, his brain reeling, his heart bursting with apprehension, crawled to the postern, and after many abortive efforts managed to secure the bolts. He then staggered to the alcove in which he slept, and searching beneath the sheepskin mat which served for his bed, found a small flask of aguardiente, and taking a deep draught of the fiery liquor, little by little recovered his outward composure.

For that night, however, sleep no more visited his eyes; and he spent the hour before dawn in making to himself wild excuses for his treason, in wilder projects for flight, and in mentally recapitulating his sins and preparing himself for death; so it can readily be imagined that it was a haggard and distraught countenance that he thrust forth from the postern at dawn, when with the first streak of light came a crowd of excited villagers to the gate, to beat upon it wildly, and with hoarse groans and cries to announce that Don Juan had been found murdered under a mesquite tree.

“Impossible! Ye are mad! Anselmo, thou art drunk, raving!” stammered forth the gate-keeper. “Don Juan is is at the reduction-works!”

“Thou liest!” cried an excited villager; “he is in purgatory. God help him! Holy angels and all saints pray for him!”

“Ave Maria! Mother of Sorrows, by the five wounds of thy Son, intercede for him!” cried a chorus of women, wringing their hands and gesticulating distractedly.

“Open the gate, Pedro!” demanded the throng without, by this time almost equalled by that within, through which the administrador, Don Rafael Sanchez, was seen forcing his way, holding high the great keys of the main door. He was a small man, with a pale but determined face, before whom the crowd fell back, ceasing for a moment their incoherent lamentations, while he assisted Pedro to unlock and throw open the doors.

“Good heavens, man, are you mad?” he exclaimed, as Pedro darted from his side and rushed toward the group of rancheros, who, bearing between them a recumbent form, were slowly approaching the hacienda. “Ah! ah, that is right,” as he saw that Pedro, with imperative gestures and a few expressive words, had induced the bearers to turn and proceed with the body toward the reduction-works; “better there than here. What could have induced him to roam about at night? I have told him a score of times his foolhardiness would be the death of him;” and with these and similar ejaculations Don Rafael hastened to join the throng which were soon pouring into the gates of the reduction-works.

Meanwhile from within the great house came the cries of women, above which rose one piercing shriek; but few were there to hear it, for in wild excitement men, women, and children followed the corpse across the valley and thronged the gates of the works which were closed in their faces, or surrounded with gaping looks, wild gesticulations, and meaningless inquiries, the tree beneath which the murdered man had been found, thus completely obliterating the signs of the struggle and flight of the murderer even while most eagerly seeking them.

John Ashley had been an alien and a heretic. No longer ago than yesterday there had been many a lip to murmur at his foreign ways. In all the history of the mining works never had there been known a master so exacting with the laborer, so rigorous with the dishonest, so harsh with the careless; yet he had been withal as generous and just as he was severe. The people had been ready to murmur, yet in their secret hearts they had respected and even loved the young Americano, who knew how to govern them, and to gain from them a fair amount of work for a fair and promptly paid wage; and who, from a half ruinous, ill-managed source of vexation and loss, was surely but slowly evolving order and the promise of prosperity.

The bearers and the crowd of laborers belonging to the reduction-works were admitted with their burden, and as they passed into the large and scantily-furnished room which John Ashley had called his own, they reverently pulled off their wide, ragged straw hats, and many a lip moved in prayer as the people, for a moment awed into silence, crowded around to view the corpse, which had been laid upon a low narrow bed with the striped blanket of a laborer thrown over it. As the coarse covering was thrown back, a woful sight was seen. The form of a man scarce past boyhood, drenched from breast to feet in blood, yet still beautiful in its perfect symmetry. The tall lithe figure, the straight features, the downy beard shading cheeks and lips of adolescent softness, the long lashes of the eyelids now closed forever, and the fair curls resting upon the marble brow, all showed how comely he had been. The women burst into fresh lamentations, the men muttered threats of vengeance. But who was the murderer? Ay, there was the mystery.

“He has a mother far off across the sea,” said a woman, brokenly.

“Ay, and sisters,” added another; “he bade us remember them when we drank to his health on his saint’s day. ‘In my country we keep birthdays,’ he said (I suppose, poor gentleman, he meant the saints had never learned his barbarous tongue); and then he laughed. ‘But saint’s day or birthday, it is all the same; I’m twenty-three to-day.’”

“Yes, ’twas twenty-three he said,” confirmed another; “and do you remember how he reddened and laughed when I told him he was old enough to think of wedding?”

“But vexed enough,” added another, “when I repeated our old proverb, ‘Who goes far to marry, goes to deceive or be deceived.’ I meant no ill, but he turned on me like a hornet. But, poor young fellow, all his quick tempers are over now; he’ll be quiet enough till the Judgment day—cursed be the hand that struck him!”

“Come, come!” suddenly broke in Don Rafael, “no more of this chatter; clear the room for the Señor Alcalde,” and with much important bustle and portentous gravity the official in question entered. He had in fact been one of the first to hasten to the scene of the murder, for the time forgetting the dignity of his position, of which in his ragged frazada, his battered straw hat, and unkempt locks, there was little to remind either himself or his fellow villagers. However, on the alcalde being called for, he immediately dropped his rôle of idle gazer, and proceeded with the most stately formality to the reduction-works. After viewing the dead body, he made most copious notes of the supposed manner of assassination, which were chiefly remarkable in differing entirely from the reality; and he gave profuse orders for the following of the murderer or murderers, delivering at the same time to Don Rafael Sanchez the effects of the deceased, for safe keeping and ultimate transmission to the relatives, meanwhile delivering himself of many sapient remarks, to the great edification of his hearers.

It appeared upon examination of various persons connected with the reduction-works that the young American had been in the habit of riding forth at night, sometimes attended by a servant, but often alone, spending hours of the beautiful moonlight in exploring the deep cañons of the mountains, having, seemingly, a peculiar love for their wild solitudes and an utter disregard of danger. More than once when he had ventured forth alone, the gate-keeper or clerk had remonstrated, but he had laughed at their fears; and in fact it was the mere habit of caution that had suggested them, the whole country being at that time remarkably free from marauders, and the idea that John Ashley—almost a stranger, so courteous, so well liked by inferiors, as well as by those who called themselves his equals or superiors—should have a personal enemy had never entered the mind of even the most suspicious. But for once the cowards were justified; the brave man had fallen, the days of his young and daring life were ended.

The alcalde and Don Rafael were eloquent in grave encomiums of his worth and regret for his folly, as they at last left the reduction-works together. They had agreed that a letter must be written to the American consul in the city of Mexico, with full particulars, and that he should be asked to communicate the sad event to the family of the deceased; but as several days, or even weeks, must necessarily elapse before he could be heard from, it was decided that the murdered man should be buried upon the following day. To wait longer was both useless and unusual. And so, these matters being satisfactorily arranged, the alcalde and administrador, both perhaps ready for breakfast, parted.

The latter at the gate of the hacienda met the major-domo, who whispered to him mysteriously, and finally led him to the courtyard, where the forsaken mule was munching his fodder. A pair of sandals lay there. Pedro, had he wished, could have shown a striped blanket and hat that he had picked up near the gateway and concealed; but the mule and sandals were patent to all.

“Well, what then?” cried Don Rafael, impatiently, when he had minutely inspected them, turning the sandals with his foot as he stared at the animal.

“Oh, nothing,” answered the major-domo; “I am perhaps a fool, but the ranchero is gone.”

Don Rafael started—fell into a deep study—turned away—came back, and laid his hand upon the major-domo’s arm. This was the first suggestion that had been advanced of the possibility of the murderer having sought his victim from within the walls of the great house. “Silencio!” he said; “what matters it to us how the man died? There is more in this than behooves you or me to meddle with.”

The two men looked at each other. “Why disturb the Señora Doña Isabel with such matters? The American is dead. The ranchero can be nothing to her,” said Don Rafael, sententiously. “He who gives testimony unasked brings suspicion upon himself. No, no! leave the matter to his countrymen; they have a consul here who has nothing to do but inquire into such matters.”

“True, true! and one might as well hope to find again the wildbird escaped from its cage, as to see that Juan Planillos! God save us! if he was indeed the true Juan Planillos!” and the mystified major-domo actually turned pale at the thought. “They say he is more devil than man; that would explain how he got out of the hacienda, for Pedro Gomez swears he let no man pass, either out or in.”

Don Rafael had his own private opinion about that, and of whom the disguised visitor might be. Yet why should he have attacked the American? Had Ashley too been within the walls,—and for what purpose? These questions were full of deep and startling import, and again impressing upon his subordinate that endless trouble might be avoided by a discreet silence, he walked thoughtfully away, those vague suspicions and conjectures taking definite shape in his mind. He went to the gate with some design of warily questioning Pedro, but the man was not there; for once, friend or foe might go in or out unnoticed. But it was a day of disorder, and Don Rafael could readily divine the excuse for the gate-keeper’s neglect of duty. Remembering that he had not broken his fast that day, he went to his own rooms for the morning chocolate; and from thence he presently saw Pedro emerge from the opposite court, and with bowed head and reluctant steps repair to his wonted post. Don Rafael Sanchez knew his countrymen, especially those of the lower class, too well to hasten to him and ply him with inquiries as he longed to do. He knew too well the value of patience, and more than once had found it golden. Rita, his young wife, had come to him, and through her tears and ejaculations was relating the account of the murder the servants had brought to her, which was as wild and improbable as the reality had been, though not more ghastly, when a servant entered with a hasty message from Doña Isabel.

IV.

While the discovery of the murder had caused this wild excitement outside the walls of the hacienda, a far different scene was being enacted within. Mademoiselle La Croix, the governess of the two sisters Herlinda and Carmen Garcia, had arisen early, leaving her youngest charge asleep, and, hurriedly donning her dressing-gown, hastened to the adjoining apartment, where Herlinda was enjoying that deep sleep which comes to young and healthy natures with the dawn, rounding and completing the hours of perfect rest, which youthful activity both of body and mind so imperatively demands.

A beautiful girl, between fifteen and sixteen, in her perfect development of figure, as well as in the pure olive tints of her complexion, revealing her Castilian descent,—Herlinda Garcia lay upon the white pillows shaded by a canopy of lace, one arm thrown above her head, the other, bare to the elbow, thrown across a bosom that rose and fell with each breath she drew, with the regularity of perfect content. Yet she opened her eyes with a start, and uttered an exclamation of alarm, as Mademoiselle La Croix lightly touched her, saying half petulantly, as she turned away, “Oh, Mademoiselle, why have you wakened me? I was so happy just then! I was dreaming of John!”

She spoke the English name with an indescribable accent of tenderness, but Mademoiselle La Croix repeated it after her almost sharply.

“John! yes,” she said, “it is no wonder he is always in your thoughts; as for me, Heaven knows what will happen to me! I am sure, had I known—” and the Frenchwoman paused, to wipe a tear from her eye.

“Ah, yes, it was thoughtless, cruel of us!” interrupted Herlinda, penitently, yet scarcely able to repress a smile as her glance fell upon the gayly flowered dressing-gown which formed an incongruous wrapping for the thin, bony figure of the governess; “but, dear Mademoiselle, nothing worse than a dismissal can happen to you, and you know John has promised—”

The governess drew herself up with portentous dignity. “Mademoiselle wanders from the point,” she interrupted; “it is of herself only I was thinking. This state of affairs must be brought to a close,” she added solemnly, after a pause. “At all risks, Herlinda, John must claim you.”

“So he knows, so I tell him,” answered Herlinda, suddenly wide awake, and ceasing the pretty yawns and stretchings with which she had endeavored to banish her drowsiness. “Oh, Mademoiselle,” a shade of apprehension passing over her face, “I have done wrong, very wrong. My mother will never forgive me!”

“Absurd!” ejaculated the governess. “Doña Isabel, like every one else in the world, must submit to the inevitable.”

“So John said; but, Mademoiselle, neither you nor John know my mother, nor my people. She will never forgive: in her place, I would never forgive!”

“And yet you dared!” cried Mademoiselle La Croix, looking at the young girl with new admiration at the courage which stimulated her own. “Truly, you Mexicans are a strange people, so generous in many things, so blind and obstinate in others. Well, well! you shall find, Herlinda, I too can be brave. If I were a coward, I should say, wait until I am safely away; but I am no coward,” added the little woman, drawing her figure to its full height and expanding her nostrils,—“I am ready to face the storm with you.”

“Yes, yes!” said the young girl, hurriedly and abstractedly. “What,” she added, rising in her bed, and grasping the bronze pillar at the head, “what is that I hear? What a confusion of voices!” She turned deadly pale, and her white-robed figure shook beneath the long loose tresses of her coal-black hair. “My God! Mademoiselle, I hear his name!”

The governess too grew pale, though she began incoherently to reassure the young lady, who remained kneeling in the bed as if petrified, her hands clasped to her breast, her eyes strained, listening intently, as through the thick walls came the dull murmur of many voices. Like waves they seemed to surge and beat against the solid stones, and the vague roar forced itself into the words, “Don Juan! Ashley!”

Although a moment’s reflection would have reminded her that a hundred other events, rather than that of his death, might have brought the people there to call upon the name of their master, one of those flashes of intuition which appear magnetic revealed to Herlinda the awful truth, even before it was borne to her outward ear by the shrill voice of a woman, crying through the corridor, “God of my life! Don Juan is killed! murdered! murdered!” She even stopped to knock upon the door and reiterate the words, in the half-horrified, half-pleasurable excitement the vulgar often feel in communicating dreadful and unexpected news; but a wild shriek from within suddenly checked her outcry, and chilled her blood.

“Fool that I am! I should have remembered,” she muttered. “Paqua told me there was certainly love between those two; she saw the glance he threw on the young Señorita in church one day. But that was months ago, and she certainly is to marry Don Vicente.”

At that moment a middle-aged, plainly-dressed woman, with the blue and white reboso so commonly worn thrown over her head, entered the corridor. Her figure was so commanding, the glance of her eyes so impressive, that even in her haste she lost none of her habitual dignity. The woman turned away, glad to escape with the reproof, “Cease your clamor, Refugio! What! is your news so pressing that you must needs frighten your young mistress with it? Go, go! Doña Isabel will be little likely to be pleased with your zeal.”

The woman hastened away, and Doña Feliz, waiting until she had disappeared, laid her hand upon the door of Herlinda’s chamber, which like those of many sleeping apartments in the house opened directly upon the upper corridor, its massive thickness and strength being looked upon as more than sufficient to repel any danger which could in the wildest probability reach it from the well guarded interior of the fort-like building.

As Doña Feliz touched the latch, the door was opened by the affrighted governess, who had anticipated the entrance of Doña Isabel. The respite unnerved her, and she threw herself half fainting in a chair, as Herlinda seized the new-comer by the shoulders, gasping forth, “Feliz, Feliz, tell me! tell me it is not true! He is not dead! dead! dead!” her voice rising to a shriek.

“Hush! hush, Herlinda! O God, my child, what can this be to thee?” Doña Feliz shuddered as she spoke. She glanced at the closed window; the walls she knew to be a yard in thickness, yet she wished them double, lest a sound of these wild ravings should escape.

“Feliz, you dare not tell me!—then it is true! he is murdered! lost, lost to me forever!” The young girl slipped like water through the arms that would have clasped her, crouching upon the floor, wringing her hands, tearless, voiceless, after her last despairing words. Feliz attempted to raise her, but in vain.

Carmen, aroused by the sounds of distress, appeared in the doorway which connected the two rooms. “Back! go back!” cried Doña Feliz, and the child frightened and whimpering, withdrew. Feliz turned to the governess,—the deep dejection of her attitude struck her; and at that moment Doña Isabel appeared.

“Herlinda,” she began, “this is sad news; but remember—” she paused, looked with stern disapprobation, then her superb self-possession giving way, she rushed to her daughter and clasped her arm. “Rise! rise!” she cried; “this excess of emotion shames you and me. This is folly. Rise, I say! He could never have been anything, child, to thee!”

Herlinda did not move, she did not even look up. She had always feared her mother; had trembled at her slightest word of blame; had been like wax under her hand. Yet now she was as marble; her hands had dropped on her lap; she was rigid to the touch; only the deep moans that burst from her white lips proved that she lived.

The attitude was expressive of such utter despair that it was of itself a revelation; and presently the moans formed themselves into words: “My God! my God! I am undone! he is dead! he is dead!”

The words bore a terrible significance to the listeners. Doña Isabel turned her eyes upon Feliz, and read upon her face the thought that had forced its way to her own mind. Her face paled; she dropped her daughter’s arm and drew back. The act itself was an accusation. Perhaps the girl felt it so. She suddenly wrung her hands distractedly, and sprang to her feet, exclaiming, “My husband! my husband! Let me go to him! he cannot be dead! he is not dead!”

The words “My husband” fell like a thunderbolt among them. Herlinda had rushed to the door, but Doña Feliz caught her in her strong arms, and forced her back. “Tell us what you mean!” she ejaculated; while the frightened governess plucked her by the sleeve, reiterating again and again, “Pardon! pardon! entreat your mother’s pardon!”

But the terrible turn affairs had taken had driven the thought of pardon, or the need of it, from her mind. “I tell you I am his wife! Ah, you think that cannot be, but it is true; the Irish priest married us four months ago in Las Parras. Let me go, Feliz, let me go! I am his wife!”

“This is madness!” interrupted Doña Isabel, in a voice of such preternatural calmness that her daughter turned as if awestricken to look at her. “Unhappy girl, you cannot have been that man’s wife. You have been betrayed! Child! child! the house of Garcia is disgraced!”

A chill fell upon the governess, yet she spoke sharply, almost pertly: “Not disgraced by Herlinda, Madame. She was indeed married to John Ashley, in the parish church of Las Parras, by the missionary priest, Father Magauley.”

The long, slow glance of incredulity changing into deepest scorn which Doña Isabel turned upon the governess seemed to scorch, to wither her. She actually cowered beneath it, faltering forth entreaties for pardon, rather, be it said to her honor, for the unhappy Herlinda than for herself. Meanwhile, with lightning rapidity, the events of the last few months passed through the mind of Doña Isabel. Yes, yes, it had been possible; there had been opportunity for this base work. Her eyes clouded, her breast heaved; had she held a weapon in her hand, the intense passion that possessed her might have sought a method more powerful than words in finding for itself expression. As it was, she turned away, sick at heart, her brain afire. Doña Feliz had placed a strong, firm hand over Herlinda’s lips. “It is useless,” she said in a voice like Fate. “You will never see him again.”

Herlinda comprehended that those words but expressed the unspoken fiat of her mother. She shuddered and groaned. “Mother! mother!” she said faintly, “he loved me. I loved him so, mother! Mother, I have spoken the truth; Mademoiselle will tell you all; I was indeed his wife.”

Doña Isabel would not trust herself to look at her daughter. She dared not, so strong at that moment was her resentment of her daring, so deep the shame of its consequences. “Vile woman!” she said to the governess, in low, penetrating tones of concentrated passion; “you who have avowed yourself the accomplice of yon dead villain, tell me all. Let me know whether you were simply treacherously ignorant, or treacherously base. Silence, Herlinda! nor dare in my presence shed one tear for the wretch who betrayed you.”

But her commands were unheeded. The present anguish overcame the habits and fears of a whole life,—as, alas! a passionate love had once before done. But then she had been under the domination of her lover, and had been separated from the mother, whose very shadow would have deterred and prevented her. Now, even the deep severity of that mother’s voice fell on unheeding ears. Though tears came not, piteous groans, mingled with the name of her love, burst from the heart of the wretched girl, who leaned like a broken lily upon the breast of Doña Feliz, who from the moment that Herlinda had declared herself a wife gazed upon her with looks of deep compassion, alternating with those of anxious curiosity toward Doña Isabel, whose every glance she had learned to interpret. She was a woman of great intelligence, yet it appeared to her as though Doña Isabel, who was queen and absolute mistress on her own domain, had but to speak the word and set her daughter in any position she might claim. The supremacy of the Garcias was her creed,—that by which she had lived; was it to be contradicted now?

“Tell me all,” reiterated Doña Isabel, in the concentrated voice of deep and terrible passion, as the cowering governess vainly strove to frame words that might least offend. “How did this treachery occur? Where and how did you give that fellow opportunity to compass his base designs?”

Herlinda started; she would have spoken, but Doña Feliz restrained her by the strong pressure of her arm; and the faltering voice of the governess attempted some explanation and justification of an event, which, almost unparalleled in Mexico, could not have been foreseen perhaps even by the jealous care of the most anxious mother.

“This is all I have to tell,” she stammered. “You remember you sent us to Las Parras six months ago, just after you had refused your daughter’s hand to John Ashley, and promised it to Vicente Gonzales. We remained there in exile nearly two months. Herlinda was wretched. What was there to console or enliven her in that miserable village? Separated from her sister, from you, Madame, whom she deeply loved even while she feared, what had she to do but nurse her grief and despair, which grew daily stronger on the food of tears and solitude? At first she was too proud to speak to me of that which caused her sleepless nights and unhappy days. But my looks must have expressed the pity I felt. She threw herself into my arms one day, and sobbed out her sad tale upon my bosom. She had spoken to this Ashley but a few times, and then in your presence, Madame; but in your country the eye seems the messenger of love. She declared that she could not live, she would not, were she separated from John Ashley; that the day of her marriage with Vicente Gonzales should be the day of her death.”

“To the point,” interrupted Doña Isabel in an icy tone. “I had heard all this. Even in John Ashley’s very presence Herlinda had forgotten her dignity and mine. This is not what I would know.”

“But it leads to it, Madame,” cried the governess, deprecatingly, “for while I was in the state of mingled pity and perplexity caused by Herlinda’s words, a message was brought to me that John Ashley was at the door. I went to speak to him. Yielding to his entreaties, I even allowed him to see Herlinda. How could I guess it was to urge a course which only the most remarkable combination of events could have made possible?”

“Intrigante,” muttered Doña Isabel, bitterly.

“You,” continued the governess, piqued and emboldened by the adjective, “angered by the sight of him as you passed the reduction-works, had yourself invented a pretext for sending him to San Marcos. You could not well dismiss him altogether from a position he filled so well. He might, you thought, reveal the reason.”

“Deal not with my motives,” interrupted the lady haughtily. “It is true I sent him to San Marcos. And what then?”

“Then, by chance, he learned what here no servant had dared to tell him,—the name of the village to which Herlinda had been sent, so near your own hacienda, too, that he had never once suspected it. And there he met a countryman. These English, Irish, Americans,—they are all bound together by a common language; and he, this poor priest, entirely ignorant of Spanish, coldly received even by his clerical brethren, was glad to spend a few days in a trip with Ashley; and as they rode together over the thirty leagues of mountain and valley between San Marcos and Las Parras, he formed a great liking for the pleasant youth, and beyond gently rallying him, made no opposition to staying over a night in the village, and joining him in holy matrimony to the woman of his choice, whom he imagined to be a poor but pretty peasant, so modest were our surroundings.”

Doña Isabel’s face darkened. “Hasten! hasten!” she muttered. “I see it all; deluded, unhappy girl.”

“Unhappy, yes!” cried the governess. “Prophetic were the tears that coursed over her cheeks, as she went with me to the chapel in the early morning, and there in the presence of a few peasants who had never seen her before, or failed to recognize her under the dingy reboso she wore, was married to the young American.”

“Ignorant imbeciles!” ejaculated Doña Isabel, but so low that no one distinctly caught her words. “And this marriage as you call it, in what language was it performed?”

“Oh, in English,” answered Mademoiselle La Croix, readily. “The priest knew no other. Immediately after the ceremony the bell sounded, the groom and bride separated, the people streamed in, and Holy Mass was celebrated, thus consecrating the marriage. Reassure yourself, Doña Isabel, all was right; the good priest gave a certificate in due form, which doubtless will be found among John Ashley’s papers.”

In spite of the stony yet furious gaze with which Doña Isabel had listened to these particulars, the governess had gathered confidence as she proceeded, and ended with a feeling that the most jealous doubter must be convinced, the most inveterate opponent silenced.

But far otherwise was the effect of her narrative upon Doña Isabel; she had been deceived by her own daughter, befooled by her hirelings. Her keen intelligence declared to her at once the fatal irregularity of the ceremony. It indeed vindicated the purity of Herlinda, but could it save her from dishonor? Thoughts of vague yet terrible meaning tormented her. The horrors of a past day returned with fresh complications to menace and torture her; and even had it been possible at that moment for her by one word to prove her daughter the honorable widow of John Ashley, it would have caused her a thousand pangs to have uttered it; and could one single word have brought him to life, she would have condemned herself to perpetual dumbness. A frenzy of shame and baffled intents possessed her. But her thoughts were not of these. She knew that this marriage as it stood was void; it met the requirements of neither Church nor State. Yet—yet—yet—there were possibilities: her family were powerful, her wealth was great.

Doña Feliz watched her with deep, inquiring eyes. Her child stood there, a voiceless pleader, her utter abandonment of grief appealing to the heart of the mother; but between them was an impregnable wall of pride and a cloud of possibilities which confused and distracted her. She came to no determination, made no resolve, but clasping her hands over her eyes, stood as if a gulf had opened in her path,—from which she could not turn, and over which she dared not pass. Slowly, at last, she dropped her arms, resumed her usual aspect of composure, and passed from the room. For some moments the little group she had left remained motionless. A profound stillness reigned throughout the house. Time itself seemed arrested, and the one word breathed through the silence seemed to describe the whole world to those within the walls,—“dead! dead! dead!”

V.

As Doña Isabel Garcia turned from her daughter’s apartment, she stepped into a corridor flooded with the dazzling sunshine of a perfect morning, and as she passed on in her long black dress, the heavily beamed roof interposing between her uncovered head and the clear and shining blue of the sky, there was something almost terrible in the stony gaze with which she met the glance of the woman-servant who hurried after her to know if she would as usual break her fast in the little arbor near the fountain. It terrified the woman, who drew back with a muttered “Pardon, Señora!” as the lady swept by her, and entered her own chamber.

The volcano of feeling which surged within her burst forth, not in sobs and cries, not in passionate interjections, but in the tones of absolute horror in which she uttered the two names that had severally been to her the dearest upon earth,—“Leon!” and “Herlinda!” and which at that moment were equally synonymous of all most terrible, most dreaded, and were the most powerful factors amid the love, the honor, the pride, the passions and prejudices which controlled her being.

For a time she stood in the centre of her apartment, striking unconsciously with her clenched hand upon her breast blows that at another time would have been keenly felt, but the swelling emotions within rendered her insensible to mere bodily pain. Indeed, as the moments passed it brought a certain relief; and as her walking to and fro brought her at last in front of the window which opened upon the broad prospect to the west, she paused, and looked long and fixedly toward the reduction-works, as if her vision could penetrate the stone walls, and read the mind which had perished with the man who lay murdered within them.

As she stood thus, she presently became aware that a sound which she had heard without heeding,—as one ignores passing vibrations upon the air, that bring no special echo of the life of which we are active, conscious parts,—was persistently striving to make itself heard; and with an effort she turned to the door, upon which fell another timid knock, and bade the suppliant enter; for the very echo of his knocking proclaimed a suppliant. She started as her eyes fell upon the haggard face of Pedro the gate-keeper.

He entered almost stealthily, closing the door softly behind him. “Señora,” he whispered, coming up to her quite closely, extending his hands in a deprecating way, “Señora, by the golden keys of my patron, I swear to you I was powerless. Don Juan told me he had your Grace’s own authority; he told me they were married!”

Doña Isabel started. In the same sentence the man had so skilfully mingled truth and falsehood that even she was deceived. By representing to his mistress that Ashley had used her name to gain entrance to the hacienda, he had hoped to divert her anger from himself,—and what matter though it fell unjustly upon the dead man? But in fact the second phrase of the sentence, “He told me they were married,” was what struck most keenly upon the ear of Doña Isabel, and chilled her very blood. How much, then, did this servant know? How far was she in his power? Until that moment she had not known—had not suspected—that the murdered man and the murderer had been within the walls of the hacienda buildings. This knowledge but confirmed her intuitions! Partly to learn facts which might guide her, and partly to gain time, she looked with her coldest, most petrifying gaze upon the man, and asked him what he meant, and bade him tell her all, even as he would confess to the priest, for so only he might hope to escape her most severe displeasure.

As she spoke, she had glided behind him and slipped the bolt of the door, and stood before the solid slab of unpolished but time-darkened cedar, a very monument of wrath. Pedro trembled more than ever, but was not for that the less consistent in his tale of mingled truth and falsehood. He had begun it with the name “The Señorita Herlinda,” but Doña Isabel stopped him with a portentous frown.

“Her name,” she said, “my daughter’s name need not be mentioned. She knows nothing of the woman John Ashley came here to see, if there is one; the Señorita Herlinda has nothing to do with her, nor with your tale. Proceed.”

Pedro, not so deeply versed in the dissimulation of the higher class as was Doña Isabel in that of the lower, looked at her a moment in utter incredulity. He learned nothing from her impassive face, but with the quickwittedness of his race divined that one of the many dark-eyed damsels who served in the house was to be considered the cause of Ashley’s midnight visits. In that light, his own breach of trust seemed more venial. Unconsciously, he shaped his story to that end, and even took to himself a sort of comfort in feigning to believe, what in his heart he knew to be an assumption—whether merely verbal or actual he knew not—of Doña Isabel.

The arguments by which he had been induced by Ashley to open the doors of the hacienda for his midnight admittance he would have dwelt on at some length, but Doña Isabel stopped him. “Tell me only of what happened last night,” she said; and in a low whisper he obeyed, shuddering as he spoke of the man whom he had admitted under the guise of a peasant, and who had rushed out to encounter the devoted American, as a madman or wild beast might rush upon its prey.

At his description, eloquent in its brevity, Doña Isabel for a moment lost her calmness; her face dropped upon her hands; her figure shrank together.

“Pedro!” she murmured, “Pedro! you knew him? You are certain?” she continued in a low, eager voice.

“Certain, Señora! Should I be likely to be mistaken? I, who have held him upon my knees a thousand times; who first taught him to ride; who saw him when—”

Doña Isabel stopped the enumeration with a gesture. She paused a moment in deep thought; then she extended her hand, and the man bent over it, not daring to touch it, but reverently, as if it were that of a queen or a saint.

“Silence, Pedro!” she said. “Silence! One word, and the law would be upon him,—though God knows there should be no law to avenge these false Americans, who respect neither authority nor hospitality, and would take our very country from us. Pedro, this deed must not bring fresh disaster; ’t was a mistake; but as you live, as I pardon you the share you bore in it, keep silence!”

The words were not an entreaty; they were a command. Doña Isabel understood too well the ascendency which as lords of the soil the Garcias held over all who had been born and bred on their estates, to take the false step of lessening it by any act of weakness. She comprehended that that very ascendency had led him to open the gates to the declared husband of Herlinda—ay! as to her lover he would have opened them. It was the house of Garcia he served, as represented by the individual possessing the dominant influence of the hour. As occasion offered, he and his associates would have favored the interests of any member in affairs of love, believing the intrigue the natural pleasure of youth, and conceiving it presumption to impugn the actions of one of the seigneurial family.

Doña Isabel became, at this time, when the terrible consequences of his levity overpowered him, the controlling power, and with absolute genius in a few words, admitting nothing, explaining nothing, offering no reward, she made the conscience-stricken man the keeper of the honor of the powerful house of which he was but the veriest minion.

Within the hour, while the people still thronged the walls of the reduction-works, Doña Feliz left the great house. The few who witnessed her departure were accustomed to the peremptory commands of the Señora Doña Isabel and the instant obedience of her confidential servant, and had as little speculation in their minds as in the gaze with which they followed the carriage and its outriders,—yet murmured a few words of pity for those who, after the horror of the tragedy, would lose the sombre splendor of the rites which must necessarily follow.

Upon the next day, John Ashley, carried in procession by the entire population of men, women, and children of Tres Hermanos, excepting only the immediate family of Doña Isabel and Pedro the gate-keeper, was borne across the wide valley, up the bleak hillside, and laid in a corner of the low-walled, unkempt graveyard, among the lowly dead of the plebe.

Not a sound escaped Herlinda, as from the windows of her mother’s room she watched the funeral procession. She had intuitively guessed the time it would issue from the gates of the reduction-works, and her mother placed no restraint upon her movements. Through the clear atmosphere of the May day she could perfectly distinguish the form, ay the very features of her beloved, as he lay stretched upon a wide board surrounded by flowering boughs, his fair curls resting upon the greenery, his hands clasped upon his breast.

To steady their steps perhaps, rather than from any religious custom, the people sang one of those minor airs peculiar to the country, and which are at once so sad and shrill that the piercing wail reached even so far as the great house,—a weird accompaniment to the swaying of the ghostly white lengths of candles borne in scores of hands, and the pale flames of which burned colorless in the brilliant sunshine.

Strangely impressive, even to an indifferent eye, might well have been that scene; the slow march of Death and Woe across the smiling fields, blotting the clear radiance of the cloudless sky, and awesome then even to a careless ear that wail of agony. Mademoiselle La Croix burst into tears and threw herself upon the floor. Doña Isabel, deadly pale, covered her eyes with a hand as cold and white as snow. Herlinda sank upon her knees with parted lips and straining eyes to watch the form upborne before that dark and sinuous procession; but when it became lost to view amid the throng which encircled the open grave, she fell prone to the floor with such a moan as only woe itself can utter,—a moan that seemed the outburst of a maddened brain and a bursting heart.

That night instead of lamentation the sounds of festivity began to be heard, and days of revelry among the peasants followed the hours of horror and gloom which had for a brief period prevailed. In the midst of them Doña Feliz returned to the hacienda. Wherever her journey had led her it had outwardly been unimportant, and drew but little comment from the men who had attended her, and was speedily forgotten. She herself gave no description of it, nor volunteered any information as to its object or result. Even to Doña Isabel, who raised inquiring eyes to the face of her emissary as she entered her private room, she said, briefly, “No, there is no record; absolutely none.”

Doña Isabel sank back in her chair with a deep-drawn breath as if some mighty tension, both of mind and body, had suddenly relaxed. She had herself sought in vain through the papers of Ashley for proofs of the alleged marriage with Herlinda, and Feliz had scanned the public records with vigilant eyes. Part of these records had in some pronunciamiento been destroyed by fire, but the book containing those of the date she sought was intact. The names of John Ashley and Herlinda Garcia did not appear therein; the marriage, if marriage there had been, was unrecorded, and as secret as it was illegal. Conscience was satisfied, and Doña Isabel was content to be passive. Why bring danger upon one still infinitely dear to her? The heart of Doña Isabel turned cold at the thought. Why rouse a scandal which could so easily be avoided? Why strive to legalize a marriage which could but bring ridicule upon herself, and shame and contempt upon Herlinda?

That day, for the first time in many, Doña Isabel could force a smile to her lip; for even for policy it had not been possible for her to smile before. She was by nature neither cold nor cruel, but she had been brought up in the midst of petty intrigues, of violent passions and narrow prejudices; and while she had scorned them, they had moulded her mind,—as the constant wearing of rock upon rock forms the hollow in the one, and rounds the jagged surface of the other. What would have been monstrous to her youth became natural to her middle age. She had suffered and striven. Was it not the common lot of woman? What more natural than that her daughter should do the same? And what more natural than that the mother should raise her who had fallen?—for fallen indeed, in spite of the ceremony of marriage, would the world think Herlinda. But why should the world know? She pitied her daughter, even as a woman pities another in travail; yet she looked to the future, she shrank from the complexities of the present; and so silently, relentlessly, shaping her course, ignoring circumstance, she, like a goddess making a law unto herself, thus unflinchingly ordered the destiny of her child. Could she herself have divined the various motives that influenced her? Nay, no more perhaps than the circumstances which will be developed in this tale may make clear the love, the woman’s purity, the high-born lady’s pride, that all combined to bid her ignore the marriage, which, though irregular, had evidently been made in good faith; and for which, in spite of open malice or secret innuendo, the power and influence of her family could have won the Pope’s sanction, and so silenced the cavillings if not the gossip of the world.

VI.

And thus in that remote hacienda—a little world in itself, with all the mingled elements of wealth and poverty, and all those subtile differences of caste and character which form society, in circles small as well as great—began a drama, which to the initiated was of deep and absorbing interest. To the common mind despair and agony can have no existence if they do not declare themselves in groans and tears, and to such Herlinda’s deep pallor and her silence revealed nothing; but there were a few who watched in solemn apprehension, feeling hers to be like the intense and sulphurous calm with which Nature awaits the coming of the tempest.

But there were indeed few who saw in her any change other than the events and anxieties of the time rendered natural. At first indeed there had been whispers in corners, and half-pitying, half-fearful shrugs and glances; but almost from the day of Ashley’s burial a new and fearful cause of public interest drew attention from Herlinda, from her pallor and her wide-eyed gaze of horror, to the consideration of a more personal anxiety.

The common people declared that from the night of the murder, death, unsatisfied with one victim, had hovered over the hacienda. The rains which should have fallen after the long dry winter, with cleansing and copious force, flooding the ravines and carrying away the accumulated impurities of months, had but moistened and stirred the infected mud of the stagnant water-courses and set loose the fevers which lingered in their depths. Years afterward the peasants dated many a widowhood and orphanage from those plague-stricken weeks. There was one death or more in every hut, and even the great house did not escape its quota of victims. One after another, members of the families of the clerks and officers succumbed,—the major-domo of the courts among the first, and then Mademoiselle La Croix, who indeed, it was afterward observed, had from the first sickened and fallen into a dejection, from which it was almost impossible she should rally. The governess was the object of the most devoted care even from the usually cold and stately Doña Isabel, while the panic-stricken Herlinda, careless of her own danger, bent over her with agonized and fruitless efforts to recall the waning life, or soothe the parting and remorseful soul.

But in all that terrible time this was the only event that seemed to touch or rouse her; for the rest, one might have thought those dreadful days but the ordinary calendar of Herlinda’s life. Indeed, it is to be supposed that they suited so well the desolation of her spirit, and that they presented so congruous a setting to her melancholy, that it became merged and absorbed as it were in her surroundings, and so was unperceived, save as the fitting humor of a time when ease and mirth would have been an insult to the general woe.

Doña Isabel had announced her intention of replacing the director of the reduction-works; but time went on, and in the general consternation produced by the epidemic nothing was done. There was much sickness at the works; many of the most experienced hands died; and one day when the clerk in charge was at the crisis of the fever, the men who were not incapacitated from illness went by common consent to the tienda to stupefy themselves with fiery native brandy; and Doña Isabel, who was fearlessly passing from one poor hovel to another, aiding the village doctress and the priest in their offices, ordered the mules to be taken from the tortas, and the stamps to be stopped. Thus, as the masses half mixed lay upon the floors, they gradually dried and hardened; and as the great stone wheels ceased to turn in the beds of broken ores, so for years upon years they remained, and the works at Tres Hermanos gradually fell into ruin,—a fit haunt for the ghost which, as years went by, was said to haunt their shades. But this was long afterward, when the memory of the handsome and hapless youth had become almost as a myth, mingled with the thousand tales of blood which the fluctuating fortunes of years of international and civil war made as common as they were terrible.

This fertile spot until now had been singularly free from the terror and disorder that had affected the greater part of the country; and though sharing the excitement of party feeling, the actual demands of strife had never invaded it. But quick upon the typhoid, when the peasants who had been spared began to think of repairing their half-ruined hovels, many of them were summoned away with scant ceremony. Don Julian Garcia appeared at the hacienda, his uniform glittering with gold braid, buttons, and lace, the trappings of his horse more gorgeous even than his own dress. He was raising a troop to join his old commander, Santa Anna, who had returned in triumph to the land from which he had been banished, to lead the arms of his countrymen against the foreign foe, which already had begun its victorious march within the sacred borders of their country. In a word, the American War had begun, and involved all factions in one common cause, giving a rallying cry to leaders of every party, to which even the most ignorant among the people responded with intuitive and unquestioning ardor.

Don Julian was uncertain in his politics, but not in his hatreds. He heard the tale of the murder of the American with complacency; the taking off of one of the heretics seemed to him natural enough,—it was scarcely worth a second thought, certainly not a pause in his work of collecting troops. If Isabel, he commented, had writhed under wounded patriotism as he had done, the American would never have had an opportunity of finding so honorable a service in which to die. Evidently the grudge of some bold patriot, this. What would you? Mexicans were neither sticks nor stones!

Herlinda heard and trembled; a faint hope, a half-formed resolve, had wakened in her breast when she had heard of the arrival of Don Julian. He was a distant cousin, a man of some influence in the family. She remembered him as more frank and genial than others of her kindred. An impulse to break the seal of silence came over her, as she heard his voice ringing through the courts and the clank of his spurs upon the stairs; but it was checked by the first distinct utterance of his lips, which, like all that followed, was a denunciation of the perfidious, the insatiable, the licentious and heretical Americans. For the first time, to the indifference with which she had regarded the desirability of establishing her position as the acknowledged wife of Ashley was added a sensation of fear. What had been in her mind an undefined and incomplete idea of the anger and scorn which the knowledge of her daring would cause among her family connections, became now a terrifying dread as the impetuous but unrepented act assumed the proportions of treason. The words which at the first opportunity she would have spoken died upon her lips, and she became once more hopeless, impassive, unresisting, cold, waiting what time and fate should bring.

And time passed on unflinchingly, and fate was unrelenting. Carmen, after a slight attack of fever, had been sent to some relative in Guanapila, and there she still remained. Doña Isabel’s household consisted only of herself, Herlinda, and the aged priest her cousin Don Francisco de Sales, who though in his dotage still at long intervals read Mass in the chapel, baptized infants, and muttered prayers over the dying or dead, not the less sincere because he who breathed them himself stood so far within the shadow of the tomb. The old man was kindly in his senility, and spent long hours dozing in the chair of the confessional, while penitents whispered in his ear their faults and sins, for which they never failed to obtain absolution, little imagining that the placid mind of the old man, even when by chance he was awake, dwelt far more upon the scenes of his youth than the follies and wickednesses of the present. Sometimes he babbled harmlessly of days long past, even of sights and doings far from clerical; but the priestly habit was second nature, and even if he heeded the confidences reposed in him, in his weakest moments they never escaped his lips. To him Herlinda was free to go and disburden her mind, complying with the regulations of her Church, and seeking relief to her troubled soul. To him, too, Doña Isabel resorted; and these two women with their tales of woe, which as often as repeated escaped his memory, roused faintly within his heart an echo of the pain which he uneasily and confusedly remembered dwelt in the world, from which he was gliding into the peace beyond.

Sometimes at the table, or as he sat with them in the corridor,—the priest in the sunshine, they in the shade,—he looked at them with puzzled inquiry in his gaze, which changed to mild satisfaction at some caress or fond word; for this gentle old man was tenderly beloved, with a sort of superstitious reverence. Even Doña Isabel attributed a special sanctity to his blessing, looking upon him as an automaton of the Church, which without consciousness of its own would—certain springs of emotion being touched—respond with admonition or blessing, fraught with all the authority of the Supreme Power. Doña Isabel, as a devout Romanist, had ever been scrupulous in the observances of her Church, submitting to the spiritual functions of the clergy absolutely, while she detested and openly protested against their licentiousness and greed, as also their pernicious interference in worldly affairs. Therefore throughout her life, and especially during her widowhood, she had studiously avoided the more popular clergy, and had sought the oracle of duty through some clod of humanity, who, though dull, should be at least free from vices,—choosing by preference one of her own family to be the repository of her secrets and the judge of her motives and actions. Unconsciously to herself, while outwardly and even to her own conscience fulfilling the requirements of her Church, she had interpreted them by her own will, which, in justice let it be said, had often proved a wise and loyal one; in a word, Doña Isabel Garcia, with exceptional powers within her grasp, had skilfully and astutely freed herself from those trammels which might at the present crisis have forced her into a diametrically opposite course from that which she had determined to pursue, or would at least have forced her to acknowledge to her own mind the doubtful nature of deeds that she now suffered herself to look upon as meritorious. For years, unconsciously, her will had imbued the judgments of her spiritual adviser, as the Padre Francisco was called, and it was not to be supposed that she should cavil now, when with complacent alacrity he echoed yea to her yea, and nay to her nay,—and as she left him, sank back into his chair with a faint wonder at her tale, to forget it in his next slumber, or until recalled to him by the anguished outpourings of Herlinda, for whom he found no words of guidance other than those which throughout his life he had given to young maidens in distress, the commendable ones, “Do as your mother directs;” though, as he listened to her words, the tears would pour down his cheeks, and pitying phrases fall from his trembling lips. Poor Herlinda would be comforted for a moment by his simple human sympathy,—even weeping perhaps, for at such times the blessed relief of tears was given her,—yet found in her darkness no light, either human or divine.

Had Mademoiselle La Croix lived, Herlinda would doubtless have received from her the impetus to throw herself upon the pity and protection of her cousin Don Julian, which in spite of his prejudices he could scarcely have refused; for the governess, though she was at first stunned and terrified by the knowledge of the invalidity of the marriage, was no coward, and would have braved much to reinstate the girl she had through compassion—and, she had with a pang been obliged to own, through cupidity—aided to bring into a false position. But she had scarcely recovered her bewildered senses, the more bewildered by the incomprehensible calm of Doña Isabel, when she was attacked by the fever,—to which she succumbed a month before the appearance of the doughty warrior, whose blustering fierceness would not have appalled her or deterred her from urging Herlinda to lay before him the matter, whose vital importance the stunned young creature failed to comprehend.

Later it burst upon her, but it was then too late,—Don Julian had marched away with his troops. She was alone,—no help, no counsellor near. Alone? Ah, no! there were human creatures near, who could behold and suspect and shake the head. Herlinda awoke to the shame of her position, as a bird in a net, striving to fly, first learns its danger. O God! where should she fly? Were these careless, laughing women as unconscious as they seemed? Where might she hide herself from these languid, soft eyes, which suddenly might become hard and cruel with intelligence? Herlinda drew her reboso around her, and with flushing cheek traversed the shadiest corridors in her necessary passages from room to room, her eyes, large with apprehension, burning beneath her downcast lids. Every day she grew more restless, more beautiful. She walked for hours in the walled garden, which the servants never entered. They began to whisper, forgetting the gossip of months before, that the chances of war were secretly stealing the gayety and buoyancy of Herlinda’s youth, by keeping from her side the playmate of her childhood, her lover Vicente Gonzales. Feliz smiled when a garrulous servant spoke thus one day, but ten minutes later entered the room of Doña Isabel.

The next morning it was known that the Señorita Herlinda was to have change, was to go to the capital, that Mecca of all Mexicans. Doña Isabel and Feliz were to accompany her. The clerks and overseers wondered, and shook their heads wisely. They had heard wild tales of the political factions which rendered the city unsafe to woman as to man; Santa Anna’s brief dictatorship had ended in trouble. Still, in that remote district nothing was known with certainty, and these bucolic minds were not given to many conjectures upon the motives or movements of their superiors. If anything could arouse surprise, it was the fact that the ladies were not to travel by private carriage, as had been the custom of the Garcias from time immemorial, attended by a numerous escort of armed rancheros; but being driven to the nearest post where the public diligence was to be met, were to proceed by it most unostentatiously upon their way. This aroused far more discussion than the fact of the journey itself; though it was unanimously agreed that if Doña Isabel could force herself to depart from the accustomed dignity of the family, and indeed preserve a slight incognito upon the road, her chances of making the journey in safety would be greatly increased.

Her resolve once made it was acted upon instantly, no time being allowed for news of her departure to spread abroad and to give the bandits who infested the road opportunity to plan the plajio, or carrying off, of so rich a prize as Doña Isabel Garcia and her daughter would have proved. And thus, early one November morning,—when the whole earth was covered with the fresh greenness called into growth by the rainy season which had just passed, and the azure of a cloudless sky hung its perfect arch above the valley, seeming to rest upon the crown-like circlet of the surrounding hills,—Herlinda passed through the crowd of dependents who, as usual on such occasions, gathered at the gates to see the travellers off. Doña Isabel, who was with her, was affable, smiling and nodding to the men, and murmuring farewell words to the nearest women; but Herlinda was silent, and it was not until she was seated in the carriage that she threw back the reboso which she had drawn to her very eyes, revealing her face, which was deadly pale. As she gazed lingeringly around, half sadly, half haughtily, with the proud curve of the lip (though it quivered) which made all the more striking her general resemblance to her beautiful mother, a thrill, they knew not of what or why, ran through the throng. For a moment there was a profound silence, in the midst of which the aged priest raised his hand in blessing. Suddenly a flash of memory, a gleam of inspiration, came over him; he turned aside the hand of Doña Isabel, which had been extended in farewell, and laid his own upon the bowed head of her daughter. “Fear not, my daughter,” he said, “thou art blessed. Though I shall see thee no more, my blessing, and the blessing of God, shall be with thee.”

The old man turned away, leaning heavily upon Doña Rita, the wife of the administrador, who led him tenderly away, and a few minutes later he was sitting smiling at her side, while without were heard the farewell cries of the women. “May God go with you, Niña! May you soon return! Adios, Niña! more beautiful than our patron saint! Adios, and joy be with thee!” And in the midst of such good wishes, as Herlinda still leaned from the window, a smile upon her lip, her hand waving a farewell, the carriage drove away and the people dispersed; leaving Pedro, the gate-keeper, standing motionless in the shadow of the great door-post, his eyes riveted on the sands at his feet, but seeing still the glance of agony, of warning, of entreaty, which had darted from Herlinda’s eyes, and seemed to scorch his own.

VII.

Upon the death of Mademoiselle La Croix, or rather perhaps from the time of her return to the hacienda after her ineffectual quest, Doña Feliz had virtually become the duenna of Herlinda. Not that such an office was formally recognized or required in the seclusion of Tres Hermanos, but it was nevertheless true that Herlinda had seldom found herself alone, even in the walled garden. Though she paced its narrow paths without companionship, she had been aware that her mother or Doña Feliz lingered near; and it was this consciousness that had steeled her outwardly, and forced her to restrain the passionate despair that under other circumstances would have burst forth to relieve the tension of mind and brain. When she at last roused from the apathy of despair, her days became periods of speechless agony, but sometimes at night, when she had believed that Feliz—who, since Carmen’s departure, had occupied the adjacent room—was asleep, for a few brief moments she had yielded to the demands of her grief, and given way to sobs and tears, to throw herself finally prostrate before the little altar, where she kept the lamp constantly burning before the Mother of Sorrows. Thence Feliz at times had raised her, and led her to her bed,—chill, unresisting, more dead than alive, yet putting aside the arm that would have supported her, and by mute gestures entreating to be left to her misery.

Fortunately for her reason, there were times when in utter exhaustion Herlinda had slept heavily and awoke refreshed,—and this had occurred a night or two after she had learned, by a few decisive words from her mother, of her imminent removal from Tres Hermanos. She had retired early, and awoke to find the soft and brilliant moonlight flooding her chamber. Every article in the room was visible; their shadows fell black upon the tiled floor, and the lamp before the altar burned pale. A profound stillness reigned. Herlinda raised herself on her pillow, and looked around her. The scene was weird and ghostly, and she presently became aware that she was utterly alone. She listened intently,—not the echo of a breath from the next room. Her heart leaped; for a moment its pulsations perplexed her; another, and she had moved noiselessly from her bed and crossed the room. She glanced into that adjoining. That too was flooded in moonlight, which shone full upon the bed. Yes, it was empty. Doña Feliz had doubtless been called to some sick person; she had left Herlinda sleeping, thinking that at that hour of the night there could be no danger in leaving her for a brief half hour alone.

In an instant these thoughts darted through Herlinda’s mind, followed by a project that of late she had much dwelt upon, but had believed impossible of realization. With trembling hands she took from her wardrobe a dress of some soft dark stuff, and a black and gray reboso, and put them on. Without pausing a moment for thought that might deter her, she glided from the room, crossed the corridor, and descended the stairs, taking the same direction in which Ashley had gone to his death. She paused too at the gate, to do as he had done; for she touched the sleeping Pedro lightly upon the shoulder, at the same instant uttering his name.

The man started from his sleep affrighted,—too much affrighted to cry out; for like most haciendas, Tres Hermanos had its ghost. From time to time the apparition of a weeping woman was seen by those about to die. Had she come to him now? His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth; he shook in every limb. The moonlight shone full in the court, but the archway was in shade: who or what was this that stood beside him, extending a white arm from its dark robes, and touching him with one slight finger? A repetition of his name restored him to his senses, and he staggered to his feet, muttering, “Señorita! My Señorita, for God’s sake why are you here? You will be seen! You will be recognized!”

“‘In the night all cats are gray,’” she answered, with one of those proverbs as natural to the lips of a Mexican as the breath they draw. “No one would distinguish me in this light from any of the servants; but still my words must be brief, for my absence from my room may be discovered. Pedro, I have a work to do; it has been in my mind all this time. You, you can help me!”

She clasped her hands; he thought she looked at the door, and the idea darted into his mind that she contemplated escape, or that she had a mad desire to throw herself upon her lover’s grave and die there.

“Niña! Niña, of my life!” he said imploringly, using the form of address one might employ to a child, or some dearly loved elder, still dependent. “Go back to your chamber, I beg and implore! How can I do anything for you? How can Pedro, so worthless, so vile, do anything?”

The adjectives he applied to himself were sincere enough, for Pedro had never ceased to reproach himself for his share in the tragedy which, in spite of Doña Isabel’s words, he had never really ceased to believe concerned Herlinda, though he had striven for his own peace of mind, as well as in loyalty to the Garcias, to affect a contrary opinion, until this moment, when his young mistress’s appearance and appeal rendered self-deception no longer possible. Again and again he reiterated, “What can the miserable Pedro do for you?”

Apparently with an instinct of concealment, Herlinda had crouched upon the stones, and as the man stood before her she raised her face and gazed at him with her dark eyes. How large they looked in the uncertain light! how the young face quivered and was convulsed, as her lips parted! Pedro, with an inward shrinking, expected her to demand of him the name of Ashley’s murderer; but the thought of vengeance, if it ever crossed her mind, was far from it at that moment. “Yes, yes, there is perhaps something you can do for me,” she said. “Men are able to do so much, while we poor women can only fold our hands, and wait and suffer. I thought differently once, though. John used to laugh at what he called our idle ways; he said women were made to act as well as men. But what can I do? What could any woman do in my place? Nothing! nothing! nothing!”

Pedro was silent. He knew well how powerless, what a mere chattel or toy, was a young woman of his people. It seemed, too, quite natural and right to him. In this particular case the mother was acting with incomparable severity, but she was within her right. Even while he pitied the child, it did not enter his mind to counsel her to combat her mother’s will. He only repeated mechanically, “What can I do? What would you have your servant do?”

“Not so hard a thing,” she said with a sob in her voice; “even a woman, had I one for my friend, could do this thing for me; and yet it is all I have to ask in the world. Just a little pity for my child, Pedro!” She rose to her feet suddenly, and spoke rapidly. “Pedro, they say that I was not truly married; they say my beautiful, golden-haired husband, my angel of light, deceived me. It is false, Pedro! all false! But they say the world will not believe me, and so I must go away; and my child, like an offspring of shame, must be born in secret, and I must submit. It will be taken from me, and I must submit. There is no help! no help!”

She spoke in a kind of frenzy, and her excitement communicated itself to Pedro. He understood, far better than she could, the motives of Doña Isabel; he did not condemn her, neither did he attempt to justify her to her daughter. He only muttered again in his stoical way, “What can I do?”

Herlinda accepted the words as they were meant, as an offer of devotion, of service. “Pedro, you can do much,” she said rapidly. “You can watch over my child. Years hence, when I come to ask it, you can give me news of it. Ah, they think when they take my child from me, it will be as dead to me; but Pedro,” she added in an eager whisper, “I have found what they will do. Never mind how I learned it. They will bring my child here,—here, where only the peasants will ask a few useless questions, where there will be no person of influence to interfere. Yes, it will be brought here, and—forgotten! But Pedro, promise me you will watch for it, you will protect it. Promise! promise! promise!”

Pedro was startled, but not incredulous. This would not be the first child that had been found at the hacienda doors, left to the charity of the señoras; more than one half-grown boy, of whose parents no one knew anything, loitered in the courts, and even the maid who served Doña Isabel was a foundling of this class.

“But how shall I know,” he stammered, after he had satisfied her with the promise she desired. “True enough, it may be brought here, but how shall I know?”

Herlinda scarcely heeded his words. She was busy in taking a small reliquary from her neck. It was square, made of pale blue silk, and in no way remarkable. “See, I will put this around its neck,” she said. “No one will dare remove a reliquary. There is a bit of the true cross in it. It will keep evil away; it will bring good fortune. The first day I wore it I met John; and” she added, nervously fingering the jewel at her ear, “take this, Pedro. The other I will put in the reliquary, with a prayer to San Federigo. When you see the strange child that will come here, look for these signs, and as you hope for mercy hereafter, guard the child that bears them.”

She had placed in his hand a flat earring of quaint filagree work, one of the marvels of rude and almost barbaric workmanship that the untaught goldsmiths of the haciendas produce. Pedro would have returned it to her, swearing by all he held sacred to do her will; but some sound had startled her. She slipped the reliquary into her bosom, drew her scarf around her, and glided away. He saw her pass the small doorway like a spectre. He could scarcely believe that she had been there at all, that she had actually spoken to him. He crossed himself as he lost sight of her, and looked in a dazed way at the earring in his palm.

“Would to God,” he muttered, “I had told Doña Isabel all the truth, as I meant to, when I went to her from the dead man’s side. Why did I not tell her plainly I knew her daughter Herlinda to be the woman Ashley had come here to meet,—would she have dared then to say she was not his wife? Fool that I was! I myself doubted. What, doubt that sweet angel! Beast! imbecile!” and Pedro flung his striped blanket from him with a gesture of disgust. “And now, what would be the use, though I should trumpet abroad the whole matter? No, my hour has passed. Doña Isabel must work her will; I will not fail her, for only by being true can I serve her daughter. But who knows?—Herlinda may be deceived; her fears may have turned her brain. Yet all the same I will keep this token;” and he looked at the earring reverently, then placed it in his wallet. Two days later, when she left Tres Hermanos and he saw its fellow in Herlinda’s ear, he caught the momentary glance in her dark eye, and stood transfixed.

Pedro Gomez hitherto had been a careless, idle, rollicking fellow; thenceforward he became grave, watchful, and crafty,—the change which, had there been keen observers near, all might have noticed in the outward man being as nothing to that from the specious fellow whom Ashley had found it an easy matter to bribe, to the conscience-stricken man who stood at the gates of the great hacienda of the Garcias, cognizant of its conflicting interests, and sworn to guard them; his crafty mind inclining to Doña Isabel and the cause she represented, his heart yearning over the erring daughter.

VIII.

Though Herlinda Garcia had forced a smile to her lips as she left, perhaps forever, the house where she was born, as the carriage was driven rapidly across the fertile valley her eyes remained fixed with melancholy, even despairing, intensity upon the walls wherein she had learned in her brief experience of life much that combines to make up the sum of woman’s wretchedness.

Herlinda had ever been an imaginative child, even before she had attained the age of seven years, at which she had been taught to consider herself a reasoning, responsible being; she had been conscious of vague feelings and desires, which had in a measure separated her from her family and the people who surrounded her, and had set her in sullen opposition to the aimless and inane occupations which served to while away days that her eager nature longed to fill with action. Though she had not been conscious of any especial direction into which she would have thrown her energies, she had been most keenly conscious that she possessed them, and early rebelled against the petty tasks that curbed and strove to stifle them,—such tasks as the embroidering of capes and stoles, or drawing of threads from fine linen, to be replaced with intricate stitches of needle-work, to form the decoration of altar cloths, or the garments of the waxen Lady of Sorrows above the altar in the chapel, or of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the great sala,—as she did also against the endless repetition of prayers, for which she needlessly turned the leaves of her well-thumbed breviary. How she had longed for freedom to run with the peasant children over the fields! How many hours she had hung over the iron railing of her mother’s balcony, and gazed upon the far hills, and wondered what sort of world lay in the blue beyond them.

Sometimes Herlinda had attempted to talk to Vicente Gonzales of these things when he came from the city, privileged as the son of an old friend, and the scion of a wealthy and influential family, to form an early intimacy with the pretty child, whom later he would meet but in her mother’s presence with all the restrictions of Spanish etiquette. She had always liked the proud, handsome boy, but he was far slower in mental development than she, and could only laugh at her fancies. And so as they grew older, and he in secret grew more fond, she had become indifferent, restlessly longing for an expansion of her contracted and aimless existence, yet finding no promise in the prospects of war and political strife which began to allure Gonzales, and in which she could not hope to take part,—and to sit a spectator was not in the nature of Herlinda. Her mother delighted to watch the fray, to counsel and direct. It was perhaps this trait in Doña Isabel’s character that, while it had awakened her daughter’s admiration, had chafed and fretted her, checking the natural expression of her lively and energetic spirit, even as the cold and stately dignity of her manner repressed the affections which lay ardent within her, waiting but the magnetic touch of a responsive nature.

Such an one had not been found within her home; all were cold, preoccupied, absorbed in the every-day affairs of life. Sometimes, when by chance Herlinda had caught a glimpse of the repressed inner nature of Doña Feliz, the mother of the administrador, she had felt for a moment drawn toward her; but although all her life she had lived beneath the same roof with her, there had occurred no special circumstance to draw them into intimacy, or in any way lessen the barrier that difference in age and position raised between them,—for perhaps in no part of the world are the subtle differences of caste so clearly recognized and so closely observed as in those little worlds, the Mexican haciendas de campo.

Sometimes, in her unhappiest moods, when her unrest had become actual pain and resolved itself into a vague but real feeling of grief, Herlinda had thought of her father, in her heart striving to idealize what was but an uncertain memory of an elderly, formal-mannered man, handsome according to the type of his race,—sharp-featured, eagle-eyed, but small of stature, with small effeminate hands which Herlinda could remember she used to kiss, in the respectful salutation with which she had been taught to greet him. He had died when Herlinda was eight years old, just after the second daughter, Carmen, was born; and though Doña Isabel seldom mentioned him, it was understood that she had loved him deeply, and for his sake lived the life of semi-isolation which her age, her beauty, her talents, and wealth seemed to combine to render an unnatural choice. As she grew older, Herlinda began to wonder, and sometimes repine, at this utter separation from the world of which in a hurried visit to the city of Guanapila she had once caught a glimpse. Especially was this the case after the arrival of Mademoiselle La Croix, who was lost in wonder that any one should voluntarily resign herself to exile even in so lovely a spot; and although she opened for Herlinda a new world in the studies to which she directed her, they had been rather of an imaginative than a logical kind, and stimulated those faculties which should rather have been repressed, while personally the governess had answered no need in the frank yet repressed and struggling nature of her pupil.

These had been the conditions under which Herlinda had met John Ashley, and we know with what result. As the tiny stream rushes into the river and is carried away by its force, their waters mingling indistinguishably, so the mind, the very soul of Herlinda had felt the power of that perfect sympathy which, in the few short words uttered in the pauses of a dance (for they had first met at Guanapila) and the expressive glances of his eyes, she believed herself to have found in the mind and heart of the alien,—a man in her mother’s employ, one whom ordinarily she would have treated with perfect politeness, but would have thought of as set as far apart from her own life as though they were beings of a separate order of creation. The fact that he was a handsome young man would primarily have had no effect upon Herlinda, though undoubtedly it served to render to her mind more natural and delightful the ascendency which, in spite of all obstacles, he rapidly gained over her entire nature.

Needless is it for us to analyze the mind and character of Ashley. It is certain he loved Herlinda passionately, and in the opposition of Doña Isabel to his suit saw but irrational prejudice and mediæval tyranny. His entire freedom from sordid motives, and his fears of the consequences of delay,—knowing as he did of the desired engagement between Herlinda and the young Vicente Gonzales,—justified to his mind a course which the canons of honor would have forbidden, but of the legality of which he certainly had had no question, the intricacies and delicacies of marriage laws having engaged no share in the attention of a somewhat adventurous youth.

This very heedlessness and activity of John Ashley’s nature had formed an especial charm to Herlinda; she would have shrunk from and pondered over a more cautious nature,—perhaps would have ended in loving, but she never would have cast aside all the traditions of her youth. All her life she had been like a bird in the cage. For a brief space she had seen the wide expanse of the sky opening above her, she had fluttered upward; but death had struck her down to darkness,—death, which had pierced the strong and loving one who would have guided and protected her! She moaned, and turned her face to the corner of the carriage. An arm stole around her; it was that of Doña Feliz.

IX.

The pale dawn, creeping over the hills behind which the sun was still hidden, revealing to the accustomed sight of Doña Feliz a narrow, irregular street of adobe hovels; a tiny church with a square tower, where the swallows were sleepily chirping; around and behind, stray trees and patches of gardens; upon the waste of sand, where cacti and dusty sagebrush grew, up to the hills where the pines began, a road of yellow sand, winding like a sinuous serpent over all; two or three early loiterers, with eyes turned toward the diligence, which thus early was making its way from the night’s resting place toward the distant city,—such was the scene upon which the trusted servant and friend of the Garcias looked on a morning early in November. She was standing in the low gateway that gave entrance to a garden overgrown with weeds and vines. These vines spread from the fig and orange trees, and half covered the ruinous walls of a house which had once, where the surroundings were so humble, ranked as an elegant mansion, and which indeed had served in years gone by as a temporary retreat, small but attractive, for such of the family of Garcia as desired a few days’ retirement from their accustomed pursuits. Here the ladies had wandered amid the flowers, and sat under the arbors where the purple grapes clustered, and honeysuckle and jessamine mingled their rich odors; and the gentlemen had smoked their cigarettes in luxurious ease, or sallied forth to shoot the golden plover in its season, or hunt the deer amid the surrounding hills. This had in fact been a quinta, or pleasure resort, but since the days of revolutions and bandits it had been utterly abandoned to the rats and owls, or to the nominal care of the ragged brood who huddled together in the half-ruinous kitchen; and here the romance of Herlinda’s life had been enacted.

When Doña Isabel Garcia had desired to send her daughter from the hacienda of Tres Hermanos, in order to remove her from the neighborhood of Ashley and give her the benefit of change, she had at first been sadly perplexed where to send her. Should she go to her relatives in the city, it was possible that her dejected mien and unguarded words might give them a suspicion of the truth,—and Doña Isabel detested gossip, particularly family gossip; besides, she looked upon Herlinda’s marriage with Vicente Gonzales as certain, and dreaded lest the faintest rumor of the young girl’s attachment should reach his ears, and awaken in him the slumbering demon of jealousy,—which, though it might rouse the young soldier as a lover to fresh ardor only, might incite him later as her husband to a tyranny which the mind of Herlinda was ill disposed to bear. In this dilemma the house at Las Parras had occurred to her. Once in her own girlhood she had visited the place, and she remembered it as a most charming sylvan retreat; and although she knew it to be situated in the outskirts of a small hamlet scarce worthy of the name of village, and that it had been abandoned for years, its isolation and abandonment at that juncture precisely constituted its attractions; and thither, under the care of Don Rafael the administrador and of Mademoiselle La Croix, Herlinda had been sent. Precautions had been taken to baffle the inquiries of Ashley as to their route and destination, which, as has been said, an accident revealed to him just when his mind was most strongly excited by the mystery which his disposition and training, as well as his love, led him passionately to resent. Hither, too, when a new and still more important need had risen, Herlinda had been brought.

Doña Isabel had been unaffectedly shocked, when, after a tortuous journey by diligence in order to evade conjecture as to their destination, they had at nightfall arrived at this deserted mansion, and had passed through the narrow door-way set in the high stone-wall that surrounded the garden, and had looked upon its tangled masses of half tropic vegetation, and entered the ruin, to find that only three or four small rooms opening upon the vineyard were habitable. But in these few rooms they and their secret were safe,—safe as if buried in the caves of the earth. Herlinda looked around her for familiar faces, but all she saw were strange to her. Doña Isabel had guarded against recognition of Herlinda, and even her own identity was disguised. To the women and the old man who performed the work of the kitchen and went the necessary errands, but who were rigidly excluded from the private rooms, she was known only as a friend of Doña Isabel Garcia,—one Doña Carlota, whose family name awoke no interest or inquiry.

After satisfying her hungry anxiety to catch a glimpse of the servants, and finding them strangers, Herlinda made no further effort to encounter them. She was very ill after arrival, and it is doubtful whether the attendants—dull, apathetic creatures—ever saw her face plainly from the day she entered the house until that of which we speak, when Doña Feliz stood in the low doorway in the garden wall, and looked toward the diligence which appeared indistinctly, a moving monster in the distance. She glanced back occasionally, half impatiently, half sorrowfully, to the house. Through the open door of it presently glided Doña Isabel. Her head was bent, her olive cheeks were deadly pale, and she shivered as with cold as she stepped out into the dusk of early morning,—or rather late night, for it was an hour when not a creature around the place was stirring, not even the birds; a wide-eyed cat stared at her as she passed down the narrow walk, and she shrank even from its gaze. She held something under her black reboso, which upon reaching Feliz she passed to her with averted eyes.

“Take it,” she said; “Herlinda is asleep. We trust you, Feliz. I in my shame, she in her despair, we give this child to you, never to ask it of you again, never to know whether it lives or dies.”

The passionless composure with which she said these words, the absolute freedom from any tone of vindictiveness, gave to them the accent of perfect trust. There was nothing of cruelty, nothing of hesitancy in the tone or words or manner with which Doña Isabel Garcia laid in the arms of Feliz a new-born sleeping infant, and thus separated herself and her family from the fate which with absolute confidence she placed in the hands of the statuesque, cold-faced woman who stood there to receive it.

But with the child in her arms a great change swept over the face of Feliz. One could not have told at a glance whether it was loathing and resentment, or an agony of pity, that convulsed her features, or all combined. “My words are all said,” she murmured. “Herlinda is, you say, resigned. Oh, Doña Isabel, Doña Isabel, you will rue this hour! I do your will; do not you blame or accuse me in the future!”

The diligence had driven through the village. To the astonishment of the idlers it stopped before the wall that circled the half-ruined quinta; a woman stepped through the doorway, and was helped to her seat. She had evidently been expected by the driver. They would have been still more surprised had they also seen the lady who waved a white hand at parting, and who turned back into the garden with a deep-drawn sigh of relief, followed by a groan that seemed to rend and distort the lips through which it came, and which she vainly strove to keep from trembling as she entered the house, and answered the call of her awakened daughter.

What can I say of the scene that followed? What that will awaken pity, unstained with blame, for that poor creature, so powerless in that land that her sisters, in others more blessed, perhaps, find it impossible to put themselves in imagination in her place even for a single moment? But the captive slave can writhe; woman, the pampered toy, may weep: and where woman was both (for even in Mexico a new era is dawning on her), she could struggle and despair and die,—but, as Herlinda knew too well, in youth at least she could not assert her womanhood, and make or mar her own destiny. In such a land, in such a cause, what champion would arise to beat down the iron laws of custom which manacled and crushed her? Not one!

X.

One day Pedro Gomez, half-sleeping half-meditating as he sat on the stone bench beneath the hanging serpents that garnished the vestibule of Tres Hermanos, thought he saw a ghost upon the stairs which led from one corner of the wide court into which he had glanced, to the corridor of the upper floor. An apparition of Doña Feliz, he thought, had passed up them; and with ready superstition he decided in his own mind that some evil had befallen her in her journeyings. He was so disturbed by this idea that a few moments later, as her son Don Rafael passed through the vestibule, he ventured to stop him and tell him what he had seen; whereat Don Rafael burst into a loud laugh.

“What, do you not know,” he said, “that my mother has returned? Ah, I remember you were at Mass this morning. She came over from the post-house on donkey-back. A wonderful woman is my mother; but she knew we had need of her, and she came none too soon. I opened the door to her myself;” and Don Rafael hastened to his own apartments, where it was understood Doña Rita his wife hourly awaited the pangs of motherhood, and left Pedro gazing after him in open-mouthed astonishment.

In the first place nothing had been heard of the probability of the return of Doña Feliz; in the second, the manner of her return was unprecedented. She was a woman of some consequence at the hacienda. It was an almost incredible thing that under any circumstances she should arrive unexpectedly at the diligence post, and ride a league upon a donkey’s back like the wife of a laborer. And thirdly it was a miracle that he Pedro had himself gone to Mass that morning,—he could not remember how it had come about,—and that discovering his absence from the gate Don Rafael had himself performed his functions, and had not soundly rated him for his unseasonable devotion; for Don Rafael was not a man to confound the claims of spiritual and secular duties.

Pedro Gomez did not put the matter to himself in precisely these words; nevertheless it haunted and puzzled him, and kept him in an unusual state of abstraction,—which perhaps accounted for the fact that later in the day, just at high-noon, when the men were afield and the women busy in their huts, and Pedro had ample leisure for his siesta, he was suddenly aroused by a voice that seemed to fall from the skies. Springing to his feet, he almost struck against a powerful black horse, which was reined in the doorway; and dazzled by the sun, and confused by the unexpected encounter, he gazed stupidly into the face of a man who was bending toward him, his broad hat pushed back from a mass of coal-black hair, his white teeth exposed by the laugh that lighted up his whole face as he exclaimed,—

“Here, brother! here is a good handful for thee! I found it on the road yonder. Caramba! my horse nearly stepped on it! Do people in these parts scatter such seeds about? I fancy the crop would be but a poor one if they did, and I saw a good growth of little ones in the village yonder. Well, well! I have no use for such treasure; I freely bestow it on thee,”—and with a dexterous movement the stranger placed a bundle, wrapped in a tattered scarf, in the hands of the astounded Pedro, and without waiting question or thanks, whichever he might have expected, put spurs to his horse and galloped across the dusty plain.

Twice that day had Pedro Gomez been left, as he would have said, open-mouthed. Almost unconscious of what he did, he stood there watching the cloud of dust in which the horse and rider disappeared, until he felt himself pulled by the sleeve, and a sharp voice asked, “In the name of the Blessed, Tio, what have you there? Ay, Holy Babe! it is a child!”

A faint cry from the bundle confirmed these words; a tiny pink fist thrust out gave assurance to the eyes.

Pedro Gomez, strong man as he was, trembled in every limb, and sank on a seat breathless; but even in his agitation he resisted the efforts of his niece to unwrap the child.

“Let it be,” he said; “I will myself look at this gift which the Saints have sent me.”

With trembling hands he undid its wrappings. The babe was crying lustily; red, grimacing, struggling, it was still a pretty child,—a girl only a few days old. Around its neck, under the little dress of white linen, was a silken cord. Pedro drew it forth, certain of what he should find. Florencia pounced upon the blue reliquary eagerly. “Let us open it,” she said; “perhaps we shall find something to tell us where the babe comes from, and whose it is.”

“Nonsense!” said Pedro, decidedly; “what should we find in it but scraps of paper scribbled with prayers? And who would open a reliquary?”

Florencia looked down abashed, for she was a good daughter of the Church, and had been taught to reverence such things.

“No, no, girl! run to the village and bring a woman who can nourish this starving creature;” and as the girl flew to execute her commission, Pedro completed his examination of the child.

It was clothed in linen, finer than rancheros use even in their gala attire, and the red flannel with white spots, called bayeta, was of the softest to be procured; but beyond this there was nothing to indicate the class to which the child belonged. Upon a slip of paper pinned to its bosom was written the name Maria Dolores (what more natural than that such a child should bear the name, and be placed under the protection of the Mother of Sorrows?), and upon the reverse was “Señora Doña Isabel Garcia.” Was this to commend the waif to the care or attention of that powerful lady? Pedro rather chose to think it a warning against her. “What! place the bird before the hawk?” With a grim smile he thrust the paper into his bosom. Doña Isabel was he knew not where,—later would be time enough to think of her; meanwhile, here were all the women and children, all the old men, and halt and lame of the village, trooping up to see this waif, which in such an unusual manner had been dropped into the gate-keeper’s horny palms.

Some of the women laughed; all the men joked Pedro when they saw the child, though a yellow nimbus of hair around its head and the fineness of its clothing puzzled them.

Pedro had hastily thrust the slip of paper into his breast, scarce knowing why he did so; for though some instinct as powerful as if it were a living voice that spoke, urged him to secrete the child, to rush away with it into the fastnesses of the mountains, rather than to render it to Doña Isabel, he did not doubt for a moment that she herself had provided for its mysterious appearance at the hacienda, that it might be received as a waif, and cared for by Doña Feliz as her representative.

These thoughts flashed through his mind, and he heard again Herlinda’s despairing cry: “Watch for my child! Protect it! protect it!” Was it possible that she had actually known that this disposition would be made of her child? Involuntarily his arms closed around it, and he clasped it to his broad breast, looking defiantly around.

“Tush, Pedro, give it to me!” cried one stout matron, longing to take the little creature to her motherly breast. “What know you of nursing infants? A drop of mother’s milk would be more welcome to it than all thy dry hugs. Ah, here comes the Señor Administrador,” and the crowd opened to admit the passage of Don Rafael, who attracted by the commotion had hastened to the spot in no small anger, ordering the crowd to disperse; but he was greeted with an incomprehensible chorus of which he only heard the one word “baby,” and exclaimed in indignation,—

“And is this the way to show your delight, when the poor woman is at the point of death perhaps? Get you gone, and it will be time enough to make this hubbub when it comes.”

The women burst out laughing, the men grinned from ear to ear, and the children fell into ecstasies of delight. Don Rafael was naturally thinking of the expected addition to his own family, and was enraged at what he supposed to be a premature manifestation of sympathy. Pedro alone was grave, and stepping back pointed to the infant, which was now quiet upon the bosom of Refugio, her volunteer nurse. “This is the child they speak of, Señor,” he said, and in a few words related the manner in which it had been delivered to him.

If he had expected to see any consciousness or confusion upon the face of Don Rafael, he must certainly have been disappointed, for there was simply the frankest and most perfect amazement, as he turned to the woman who had stepped out a little from the crowd and held the infant toward him. He saw at a glance that it was no Indian child,—the whiteness of its skin, the fineness of its garments, above all the yellow nimbus of hair, already curling in tiny rings around the little head, struck him with wonder. He crossed himself, and ejaculated a pious “Heaven help us!” and touched the child’s cheek with the tip of his finger, and turned its face from its nurse’s dusky breast in a very genuine amaze, which Pedro watched jealously. The child cried sleepily, and nestled under the reboso which the woman drew over it, hushing it in her arms, murmuring caressingly, as her own child tugged at her skirts,—“There, there, sleep little one, sleep! nothing shall harm thee; sleep, Chinita, sleep!”

But the little waif—whose soft curls had suggested the pet name—was not yet to slumber; for at that moment Doña Feliz appeared. Pedro noticed as she crossed the courtyard that she was extremely pale. Some of the women rushed toward her with voluble accounts of the beauty of the child and the fineness of its garments. She smiled wearily, and turned from them to look at the foundling. A flush spread over her face as she examined it, not reddening but deepening its clear olive tint. She looked at Rafael searchingly, at Pedro questioningly. He muttered over his thrice-told tale. “Was there no word, no paper?” she said, but waited for no answer. “This is no plebeian child, Rafael. What shall we do with it? Doña Isabel is not here, perhaps will not be here for years!”

There was a buzz of astonishment, for this was the first intimation of Doña Isabel’s intended length of absence. In the midst of it Pedro had taken the sleeping child from Refugio’s somewhat reluctant arm, and wrapping it in a scarf taken from his niece’s shoulders, had laid it on the sheepskin in the alcove in which he usually slept. This tacit appropriation perhaps settled the fate of the infant; still Doña Feliz looked at her son uneasily, and he rubbed his hands in perplexity. “Of all the days in the year for a babe like this to be left here,” he said, “when, the Saints willing, I am to have one of my own! No, no, mother, Rita would never consent.”

“Consent to what?” she answered almost testily. “What! Because this foundling chances to be white, would you have your wife adopt it as her own, when after so many years of prayer Heaven has sent her a child? No, no, Rafael, it would be madness!”

“There is no need,” interpolated Pedro, with a half-savage eagerness, and with a look which, strangely combined of indignation and relief, should have struck dumb the woman who thus to the mind of the gate-keeper was revealed as the incarnation of deceit,—“there is no need. I will keep the child; ‘without father or mother or a dog to bark for me,’ who can care for it better? Here are Refugio and Teresa and Florencia will nurse it for me. It will want for nothing.” A chorus of voices answered him: “We will all be its mother.”—“Give it to me when it cries, and I will nurse it.”—“The Saints will reward thee, Pedro!”—in the midst of which, in answer to a call from above, Doña Feliz hastened away, saying, “Nothing could be better for the present. Come, Rafael, you are wanted. I will write to Doña Isabel, Pedro; she will doubtless do something when you are tired of it. There is, for example, the asylum at Guanapila.”

Pedro gazed after her blankly. In spite of that momentary flush on the face, Doña Feliz had seemed as open as the day. He never ceased thereafter to look upon her in indignant admiration and fear. Her slightest word was like a spell upon him. Pedro was of a mind to propitiate demons, rather than worship angels. There was something to his mind demoniacal in this Doña Feliz.

Half an hour after she had ascended the stairs, and the idlers had dispersed to chatter over this event, leaving the new-found babe to its needed slumber, the woman who acted the part of midwife to Doña Rita ran down to the gate where Pedro and his niece were standing, to tell them that there was a babe, a girl, born to the wife of the administrador. A boy, who was lounging near, rushed off to ring the church bell, for this was a long-wished-for event; but before the first stroke fell on the air, the voice of Doña Feliz was heard from the window: “Silence! Silence! there are two. No bells, no bells!”

Two! Doña Rita still in peril! The midwife rushed back to her post. The door was locked, and there was a momentary delay in opening it. “Where have you been,” said Doña Feliz severely, “almost a half an hour away?”

The woman stared at her in amaze,—the time had flown! Yes, there was the evidence,—a second infant in the lap of Doña Feliz, puny, wizened. She dressed it quickly, asking no assistance, ordering the woman sharply to the side of Doña Rita.

“A thousand pities,” said Don Rafael as he looked at it, “that it is not a boy!” Then as the thought struck him, he laughed softly: “Ay, perhaps it is for luck,—instead of the three kings, who always bring death, we have the three Marias.”

Doña Rita had heard something of the foundling, and smiled faintly. “Thank God they were not all born of one mother,” she said. “Ay! give me my first-born here;” and with the tiny creature resting upon her arm, and the second presently lying near, Doña Rita sank to sleep.

XI.

Though the three Marias, as Don Rafael had called them, thus entered upon life, or at least into that of the hacienda of Tres Hermanos, almost simultaneously, except at their baptism they found nothing in common. On that occasion, a few days later than that of which we have written, the aged priest, in the name of the Trinity, severally blessed Fiorentina, Rosario, and Dolores,—each name as was customary being joined to that of the virgin Queen of Heaven; but as they left the church their paths separated as widely as their stations differed. Dolores, for whom in vain—were it designed to subdue or chasten her—was chosen so sad a name, was taken to the dusky little hut, a few rods from the gate, that was, when he chose to claim it, Pedro’s home, and there cared for by his niece Florencia with an uncertain and somewhat fractious tenderness, and nourished at the breast of whomsoever happened to be at hand. She passed through babyhood, losing her prettiness with the golden tinge of her hair, and as she grew older looking with wide-opened eyes out from a tangle of dark elf-locks, which explained the survival of her baby pet-name Chinita, or “little curly one.”

Meanwhile the two children at the great house were seldom seen below stairs, so cherished and guarded was their infancy. Rosario grew a sturdy, robust little creature, with straight shining brown hair, drawn back, as soon as its length would permit, from her clear olive temples, in two tight braids, leaving prominent the straight dark eye-brows that defined her low forehead. Long curling lashes shaded her large black eyes,—true Mexican eyes, in which the vivacity of the Spaniard and the dreamy indolence of the Aztec mingled, producing in youth a bewitching expression perhaps unequalled in any other admixture of races. She had, too, the full cheeks, of which later in life the bones would be proved too high, and the slightly prominent formation of jaw, where the lips, too full for beauty, closed over perfect teeth of dazzling whiteness. Rosario was indeed a beauty, according to the standard of her country; and Florentina so closely followed the same type, that she should have been the same, but there was a certain lack of vividness in her coloring which beside her sister gave her prettiness the appearance of a dimly reflected light. Rosario was strong, vivid, dominant; Florentina, sweet, unobtrusive, spirituelle,—though they had no such fine word at Tres Hermanos for a quality they recognized, but could not classify; and so it came about, as time went on, and Rosario romped and played and was scolded and kissed, reproved and admired, that Florentina grew like a fragrant plant in the corner of a garden, which receives, it is true, its due meed of dew and sunshine, but is unnoticed, either for praise or blame, except when some chance passer-by breathes its sweet perfume, and glances down in wonder, as sometimes strangers did at Florentina. In the family, ignoring the fine name they had chosen for her, they called her little “snub-nose,”—Chata,—not reproachfully, but with the caressing accent which renders the nicknames of the Spanish untranslatable in any other tongue.

So time passed on until the children were four years old. The little Chinita made her home at the gateway rather than at the hut with Florencia, who by this time had married and had children of her own, and indeed felt no slight jealousy at the open preference her uncle showed for his foundling. For Pedro was a man of no vices, and his food and clothing cost him little; so in some by-corner a goodly hoard of sixpences and dollars was accumulating, doubtless, for the ultimate benefit of the tiny witch who clambered on his knees, pulled his hair, and ate the choicest bits from his basin unreproved; who thrust out her foot or her tongue at any of the rancheros who spoke to her, or with equally little reason fondled and kissed them; and who at the sight of the administrador or clerk or Doña Feliz, shrank beneath Pedro’s striped blanket, peeping out from its folds with half-terrified, half-defiant eyes, which softened into admiration as Doña Rita and her children passed by.

They also in their turn used to look at her with wonder, she was so different from the score or more of half-naked, brown little figures that lolled on the sand or in the doorways of the huts, or crept in to Mass to stare at them with wide-opened black eyes. They used to pass these very conscious of their stiffly-starched pink skirts, their shining rebosos, and thin little slippers of colored satin. But though this wild little elf crouching by Pedro’s side was as dirty and as unkempt as the other ranchero children, they vaguely felt that she was a creature to talk to, to play with, not to dazzle with Sunday finery,—for even so young do minds begin to reason.

As for Chinita, after the rare occasions when she saw the children of the administrador, she tormented Pedro with questions. “What sort of a hut did they live in? What did they eat? Where did their pretty pink dresses come from?”

This last question Pedro answered by sending by the first woman who went to the next village for a wonderful flowered muslin, in which to her immense delight Chinita for a day glittered like a rainbow, but which the dust and grime soon reduced to a level with the more sombre tatters in which she usually appeared. When these were at their worst, Doña Feliz sometimes stopped a moment to look at her and throw a reproving glance at Pedro; but she never spoke to him of the child either for good or ill.

One day, however,—it was the day, they remembered afterward, on which the Padre Francisco celebrated Mass for the last time,—the two little girls accompanied by their mother and followed by their nurse went to the church in new frocks of deep purple, most wonderful to see. Chinita could not keep her eyes off them, though Rosario frowned majestically, drawing her black eyebrows together and even slyly shaking a finger half covered with little rings of tinsel and bright-colored stones. But the other child, the little Chata, covertly smiled at her as she half guiltily turned her gaze from the saint before whose shrine she was kneeling; and that smile had so much of kindliness, curiosity, invitation in it that Chinita on the instant formed a desperate resolution, and determined at once to carry it through.

Now, it had happened that from her earliest infancy Pedro had forbidden her to be taken, or later to go, into the court upon which the apartments of the administrador opened. Everywhere else,—even into the stables where the horses and mules, for all Pedro’s confidence, might have kicked or trodden her; to the courtyard where the duck-pond was; to the kitchen, where more than once she had stumbled over a pot of boiling black beans—anywhere, everywhere, might she go except to the small court which lay just back of the principal and most extensive one. How often had Chinita crossed the first, and in the very act of peeping through the doorway of the second had been snatched back by Pedro and carried kicking and screaming, tugging at his black hair and beard, back to the snake-hung vestibule to be terrified by some grim tale into submission; or on occasion had even been shut up in the hut to nurse Florencia’s baby,—if nursing it could be called, where the heavy, fat lump of infant mortality was set upon the ragged skirt of the other rebellious infant, to pin her to her mother earth. Florencia perhaps resented this mode of punishment more than either of the victims, for they began with screams and generally ended by amicably falling asleep,—the straight coarse locks of the little Indian mingling with the brown curls, still tinged with gold and reddened at the tips by the sun, of the fairer-skinned girl.

Upon this day, Chinita in her small mind resolved there should be no loitering at the doorway; and scarcely had the two demure little maidens passed into the inner court and followed their mother up the stairway, when she darted in and looked eagerly around. There was nothing terrible there at all,—an open door upon the lower floor showing the brick floor of a dining-room, where a long table set for a meal stood, and a boy was moving about in sandalled feet making ready for the mid-day dinner. There was a great earthen jar of water sunk a little in the floor of a far corner, and some chairs scattered about. A picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe, under which was a small vessel of holy water, met her eyes as she glanced in. She turned away disappointed and went to another door, that of a sitting-room, as bare and uninviting as the dining-room, but with an altar at one end, above which stood a figure of Mary with the infant Jesus in her arms. Even the saints in the church were not so gorgeous as this. Chinita gazed in admiration and delight; if she could have taken the waxen babe from the mother’s arms she would have sat down then and there in utter absorption and forgetfulness. As it was, she crossed herself and ran out among the flower-pots in the courtyard and anxiously looked up. Yes, there leaning over the railings of the corridor were those she sought. At sight of her Rosario screamed with delight, her budding aristocratic scruples yielding at once to the charms of novelty. Chata waved her hand and smiled, both running eagerly to descend the stairs and grasp their new play-fellow.

“What is your name?” asked both in a breath. “Why are you always with Pedro, at the gate? Who is your mother, and why have you got such funny hair? Who combs it for you? Doesn’t it hurt?”

Chinita answered this last question with a rueful grimace, at the same time putting one dirty little finger on Rosario’s coral necklace,—a liberty which that damsel resented with a sharp slap, which was instantly returned with interest, much to Rosario’s surprise and Chata’s dismay.

At the cry which Rosario uttered, following it up with sobs and lamentations, both Doña Feliz and Doña Rita appeared. Rosario flew to her mother. “Oh, the naughty cat! the bad, wicked girl! she scratched me! she slapped me!” she cried, between her sobs.

Chata followed her sister, still keeping Chinita’s hand, which she had caught in the fray. “Poor Rosario! poor little sister,” she said pityingly; “but, Mamacita, just look where Rosa slapped the poor pretty Chinita,” and she softly smoothed the cheek which Chinita sullenly strove to turn away.

“Why, it is that wretched little foundling of Pedro’s!” cried Doña Rita, indignantly, as she wiped Rosario’s streaming cheeks. “Get you gone, you fierce little tigress! Chata, let go her hand; she will scratch you, she may bite you next.”

“Oh, no,” cooed Chata, quite in the ear of the ragged little fury beside her; while Doña Feliz, who had been silent, placed her fingers under the chin of the little waif, and lifted her face to her gaze. “Be not angry at a children’s quarrel,” she said; “they will be all the better friends for it later.”

“But I don’t wish them to be friends,” cried Doña Rita,—though the absolute separation of classes rendered intimate association possible and common between them which neither detracted from the dignity of the one caste, nor was likely to arouse emulation in the other. “What a wild, savage little fox! No, no, my lamb, she shall not come near thee again!”

But the mother’s lamb was of another mind, for suddenly she stopped crying, pulled the new-comer’s ragged skirt, and said, “Come along, I’ll show you my little fishes;” and in another moment, to Doña Rita’s amazement and Doña Feliz’s quiet amusement, the three children were leaning together, chatting and laughing, over the edge of the stone basin in the centre of the court.

In the midst of their play, a sudden fancy seized Doña Feliz. Catching up a towel that lay at hand, she half-playfully, half-commandingly caught the elf-like child and washed her face. What a smooth soft skin, what delicately pencilled brows appeared! how red was the bow of that perfect little mouth! Doña Rita sighed for very envy; Doña Feliz held the little face in her hands, and looked at it intently. But Chinita, already rebellious at the water and towel, absolutely resented this; and in spite of the cries of the children she broke away and ran from the courtyard, arriving breathless at the knees of Pedro, to cover herself with the grimy folds of his blanket.

Little by little he drew from her what had passed, comforting her though he made no audible comment; and an hour later Doña Feliz, catching sight of the child, wondered how it had been possible for her to get her face so dirty in so short a time, though a suspicion of the truth soon caused her to smile gravely. While Chinita had been telling her adventures, Pedro had drawn his grimy fingers tenderly over her cheeks, in this way at once resenting Doña Feliz’s interference, curiosity, interest, whatever it was, and manifesting his sympathy with the aggrieved one. Nor did he scold the child for her intrusion to the court, or forbid her to go again; and when after some days of hesitation, anger, and irresistible attraction she found her way thither, she wore on her neck a string of coral beads which made Rosario cry out with envy, and which Chata regarded with wide-eyed and solemn admiration.

XII.

The acquaintance thus unpromisingly begun among the three children grew apace. At first, Chinita’s visits were as infrequent as Pedro’s watchfulness and Doña Rita’s antipathy to the foundling could render them, although neither openly interfered,—Pedro, for reasons best known to himself, and Doña Rita out of respect to her mother-in-law, who she saw, in her undemonstrative and quiet way, seemed inclined to regard the child with an interest differing from that with which she favored the children of the herdsmen and laborers. Doña Feliz seldom gave Chinita anything, even in the way of sweets, with which on special festival days she sometimes regaled the others; but in the chill days of the rainy season, or when the norther blew, she it was who chid her if she ran barefooted across the courts, or left her shoulders and head uncovered, and who set all the children to string wonderful beads of amber and red and yellow, placing the painted gourd which contained them close to the brasier of glowing coals, so that the shivering little creature might benefit by its warmth.

Not that the waif was neglected, according to the customs of Pedro’s people,—indeed he was lavish to her of all sorts of rural finery. But where all children ran barefoot, where none wore more clothing than a chemise, a skirt, and the inevitable reboso (a long striped scarf of flexible cotton), and in a clime where this was usually more than sufficient for protection, it did not occur either to Florencia or Pedro to provide more against those few bitter days, when it seemed quite natural to shiver, perhaps grow ill, and to mutter against the bad weather; and so, very often the child he would have given his life to shelter had run a thousand risks of wind and weather, which custom had inured her to, and a robust constitution defied.

Still Chinita was glad of shelter and warmth, though like others, she bore the lack of them stoically, and at first in the bad weather went to the administrador’s for such comforts, as much as from the attraction which Rosario’s spiteful fondness and Chata’s soft friendliness offered; while so it chanced that she was suffered to go and come as the dogs did, sometimes caressed, sometimes greeted with a sharp word, often enough unnoticed except by Chata, who looked for the visit each day, never forgetting to save in anticipation a tiny bit of the preserved fruit she had been given at dinner, or a handful of nuts. These offerings of affection often proved efficacious in soothing the irritation caused by Rosario’s uncertain moods. Yet it was to Rosario that this perverse little creature attached herself; with her she romped, and chased butterflies in the garden; with her she laughed and quarrelled; and Chata looked on the two with a precocious benignity pretty to see, leaning often upon Doña Feliz’s lap, and, with a quaint little way she had, smoothing down with one little finger the tip of her tiny nose which obstinately turned skyward, giving just the suggestion of sauciness to features which otherwise would have been inanely uncharacteristic.

Doña Rita was of opinion that all that was necessary in the education of girls was to teach them to hem so neatly that the stitches should not show in the finest cambric, and to make conserves of various sorts,—adding, by way of accomplishment, instruction in the drawing of threads and the working of insertions in many and quaint designs, or the modelling of fruits and figures in wax, to be used in the wonderful mimic representation of the scene of the birth of the Saviour made at Christmas. But Doña Feliz held more liberal views, and much as she esteemed accomplishments, considered them of inferior value to the arts of reading and writing, which she had herself acquired with infinite difficulty, at the pain of disobedience to well-beloved parents.

Reading and writing, according to Feliz’s father, were inventions of the arch-enemy, dangerous to men, and fatal to the weaker sex. What could a woman use writing for, asked he, but to correspond with lovers,—when she should only know of the existence of such beings when one was presented as her future husband, by a wise and discreet father. What could a woman desire to read but her prayers?—and those she should know by heart. In vain, therefore, had been Feliz’s appeal to be taught to read and write. At last she and the Señorita Isabel had puzzled out the forbidden lore together, both copying portions of stolen letters, or the crabbed manuscripts in which special prayers to patron saints were written, thus acquiring an exquisite caligraphy[caligraphy], and learning the meanings of words as they noticed them appear and reappear in the copies of prayers they knew by heart. By a similar process the art of reading printing was acquired,—all in secret, all with trembling and fear. Isabel, much assisted by Feliz, who was older and had sooner begun her task, had successfully concealed her knowledge until it could be revealed with safety; and great was the indignation and surprise of Feliz’s father, when on her wedding day the bride took up the pen and signed her marriage contract, instead of affixing the decorous cross which had been expected of her,—while the groom, too, was perhaps not over pleased to find himself the husband of a wife of such high acquirements.

But these acquirements, added to her natural penetration, had been powerful factors in the life of Doña Feliz. Her husband had been weak and inefficient, yet had through her tact retained throughout his life the management of the Garcia estates: in which he had been succeeded by his son, a man of more character, which perhaps the preponderating influence of his mother as much overshadowed as it had sustained and lent a deceptive brilliancy to that of his father, who, like many a man who goes to his grave respected and admired, had shone from a reflected light as unsuspected and unappreciated as it was unobtrusive and unfaltering.

Doña Feliz had all her life, in her quiet, self-assured way, ruled in her household,—in her husband’s time because he had accepted her opinions and acted upon them, unconscious that they were not his own; while now by her son she was deferred to from the habitual respect a Mexican yields to his mother, and from the steadfast admiration with which from infancy he had recognized her talents. Thus, it is not an exaggeration to say that Don Rafael, whatever might have been his temptations to do otherwise, invariably identified himself in thought as well as act with the mother to whom he felt he owed all that was strong or fortunate or to be desired, not only in his station, but in mind or person. Therefore it was not to be expected that he would interfere when Doña Rita complained to him that his mother made Rosario cry by keeping her poring over the mysteries of the alphabet, and that Chata inked her fingers and frocks over vain endeavors to form the bow-letters at a required angle, and that both would be better employed with the needle. And indeed Don Rafael thought it a pretty sight, when he came upon his mother seated in her low chair, with the two sisters before her, Rosario’s mouth forming a fluted circle as she ejaculated “Oh!” in a desperate attempt at “O,” and Chata following the lines painfully with one fat forefinger, her eyes almost touching the book,—no dainty primer with prettily colored pictures, but a certain red-bound volume of “Letters of a Mother,” containing advice and admonition as alarming as the long and abstruse words in which they were conveyed.

With all her inattention and impatience, Rosario learned her tasks with a rapidity which roused the pride of her mother’s heart; but Chata, in those early years, stumbled wofully on the road to learning. At lesson-time Chinita, not a whit less grimy than of old, used to hasten to crouch down behind her victimized little patroness, and sometimes whisper impatiently in her ear, sometimes give her a sly tweak of the hair, when her impatience grew beyond bounds, and at others vociferate the word with startling force and suddenness; until one day it occurred to Doña Feliz, who had made no effort to teach her anything, and had often been oblivious of her very presence, that this little elf-locked rancherita was her aptest pupil. That day, when the others unwillingly seated themselves to their copy-books, she watched the gate-keeper’s child, and saw her write the words she had set for her little pupils upon the brick floor with a piece of charcoal taken from the kitchen, then covertly wipe them off with the hem of her skirt.

Doña Feliz was touched. Here was a child of five doing what she herself at fifteen had painfully acquired. She did not pause to think that what with her had been the result of deep thought, was here but parrot-like though effective imitation. She took away the charcoal from the child’s blackened fingers, bade her stand at the table, and gave her pen and ink.

After the lesson Chinita flew rather than ran across the court, leaving Rosario and Chata astounded and offended that she would not play, and thrust into Pedro’s hand a piece of dirty paper covered with cabalistic characters. She had already confided to him that she could read, and had even once spelled out to him a scrap of printed paper which had come in his way, amazing him by her knowledge; but now that she could write, a veritable superstitious awe of this elfish child befell him.

That evening Pedro stole into the church, and lighted two long candles before the image of the Virgin. Were they an offering of thanks for a miracle performed, or a bribe against evil? The man went back to his post thoughtful, his breast swelling with pride, his head bowed in apprehension. He never had heard that those the gods love die young, yet something of such a fear oppressed him,—though as he found Chinita in flagrant disgrace with Florencia because she had drunk the last drop of thin corn-gruel which the woman had saved for her uncle’s supper, he had reasonable ground for believing that the healthful perversity of her animal spirits and moral nature might counteract the malefic effect of mental precocity; and as he was thirsty that night, so might have been interpreted the muttered “A dry joke this!” with which he looked into the empty jar, and swallowed his tough tortillas and goatmilk cheese.

“Ay! but Florencia is cross to poor Chinita,” whispered this astute little damsel, seizing the opportunity to creep up behind him when he was not looking, of stealing a brown arm around his neck, and interposing her shock of curls between his mouth and the morsel he destined for it. “Who has poor Chinita to love her but Pedro, good Pedro?” And so Pedro’s anger was charmed away, even as he thought evil might be turned from his wilful charge by the faint glow of the two feeble candles he had lighted. Were her coaxing ways as evanescent, as little to be relied on, as their flicker? Ay, Chinita!

XIII.

These few years of which the flight has been thus briefly noted, had wrought a subtle change in the appearance of Tres Hermanos as well as in the life of its inhabitants. Gradually there came over it that almost indescribable suggestion of absenteeism which falls upon a dwelling when there is death within, and which is wholly different from the careless untidiness of a house temporarily closed. True, there was movement still at Tres Hermanos,—people came and went, the fields were tilled, the herds of horses roamed upon the hillside, the cattle lowed in the pastures, the village wore its accustomed appearance of squalid plenty, the children played at every doorway, the same numbers of heavily-laden mules passed in at the house-gates, the granaries were as richly stored,—and yet, even to the casual observer, there was a lack. At first, one would attribute it wholly to the pile of deserted buildings to the west. No smoke ever issued from the tall stack of the reduction-works; the lizards ran unmolested upon the walls, which already had crumbled in a place or two, affording entrance to a few adventurous goats, which browsed upon the herbage that sprang up in the court, and even around the great stones in the reduction-sheds. But turning the eyes from these, there was something desolate in the appearance of the great house itself. The upper windows opening upon the country were always closed, dust gathered in the balcony where Doña Isabel had been wont to stand, and a rose, which had long striven against neglect, waved its slender tendrils disconsolately in the evening breeze. Some one pathetically calls a closed window the dropped eyelid of a house; and so seemed those barred shutters of cedar, upon which beat the last rays of the setting sun.

The great event of the American War had despoiled Tres Hermanos of many of its young men. Others had from time to time been drawn into the broils that followed, and which had been augmented by the dictatorship of Santa Anna; yet the estate itself had escaped invasion. Its great storehouses of grain remained intact, its fields were untrodden by the horses of soldiery either hostile or friendly; but a change menaced it,—a hoarse murmur as of the sea seemed to gather and break against the bulwark of mountains that environed it. News of the great events of the day penetrated the remote valley, and with them vague apprehensions and disquiet. Even the laborers in the fields felt the oppression of the storm which was raging without, and which threatened to break upon them. Their hearts quaked; they knew not what an hour might bring forth. For the first time they realized that the great events which had been transpiring, and were still in progress beyond their cordon of hills, meant more to them than food for gossip, or an attraction to some idle boy to whom army life meant a frolic and freedom from work.