Mine were anything but agreeable. I was pained and puzzled. I was pained to think that she—dearer to me than life—was thus exposed to the dangers that surrounded us. It was her sister that had occupied the other hammock.

“Are they alone? Are they prisoners in the hands of these half-robbers? May not their hospitality to us have brought them under proscription? And are they not being carried—father, mother, and all—before some tribunal? Or are they travelling for protection with this band—protection against the less scrupulous robbers that infest the country?”

It was not uncommon upon the Rio Grande, when rich families journeyed from point to point, to pay for an escort of this sort. This may elucidate—.

“But I tell yez I did hear a crack; and, be my sowl! it was the sargint’s rifle, or I’ve lost me sinses intirely.”

“What is it?” I asked, attracted to the conversation of my comrades.

“Chane says he heard a shot, and thinks it was Lincoln’s,” answered Clayley.

“His gun has a quare sound, Captain,” said the Irishman, appealing to me. “It’s diffirint intirely from a Mexican piece, and not like our own nayther. It’s a way he has in loadin’ it.”

“Well—what of that?”

“Why, Raowl says one of them axed him who fired. Now, I heerd a shot, for my ear was close till the door here. It was beyant like; but I cud swear upon the blissed crass it was ayther the sargint’s rifle or another as like it as two pays.”

“It is very strange!” I muttered, half in soliloquy, for the same thought had occurred to myself.

“I saw the boy, Captain,” said Raoul; “I saw him crossing when they opened the door.”

“The boy!—what boy?” I asked.

“The same we brought out of the town.”

“Ha! Narcisso!—you saw him?”

“Yes; and, if I’m not mistaken, the white mule that the old gentleman rode to camp. I think that the family is with the guerilla, and that accounts for our being still alive.”

A new light flashed upon me. In the incidents of the last twenty hours I had never once thought of Narcisso. Now all was clear—clear as daylight. The zambo whom Lincoln had killed—poor victim!—was our friend, sent to warn us of danger; the dagger, Narcisso’s—a token for us to trust him. The soft voice—the small hand thrust under the tapojo—yes, all were Narcisso’s!

A web of mystery was torn to shreds in a single moment. The truth did not yield gratification. No—but the contrary. I was chagrined at the indifference exhibited in another quarter.

“She must know that I am here, since her brother is master of the fact—here, bleeding and bound. Yet where is her sympathy? She sleeps! She journeys within a few paces of me, where I am tied painfully; yet not a word of consolation. No! She is riding upon her soft cushion, or carried upon a litera, escorted, perhaps, by this accomplished villain, who plays the gallant cavalier upon my own barb! They converse together, perhaps of the poor captives in their train, and with jest and ridicule—he at least; and she can hear it, and then fling herself into her soft hammock and sleep—sleep sweetly—calmly?”

These bitter reflections were interrupted. The door creaked once more upon its hinges. Half a dozen of our captors entered. Our blinds were put on, and we were carried out and mounted as before.

In a few minutes a bugle rang out, and the route was resumed.

We were carried up the stream bottom—a kind of glen, or Cañada. We could feel by the cool shade and the echoes that we were travelling under heavy timber. The torrent roared in our ears, and the sound was not unpleasant. Twice or thrice we forded the stream, and sometimes left it, returning after having travelled a mile or so. This was to avoid the cañons, where there is no path by the water. We then ascended a long hill, and after reaching its summit commenced going downwards.

“I know this road well,” said Raoul. “We are going down to the hacienda of Cenobio.”

“Pardieu!” he continued. “I ought to know this hill!”

“For what reason?”

“First, Captain, because I have carried many a bulto of cochineal and many a bale of smuggled tobacco over it; ay, and upon nights when my eyes were of as little service to me as they are at present.”

“I thought that you contrabandistas hardly needed the precaution of dark nights?”

“True, at times; but there were other times when the Government became lynx-eyed, and then smuggling was no joke. We had some sharp skirmishing. Sacre! I have good cause to remember this very hill. I came near making a jump into purgatory from the other side of it.”

“Ha! how was that?”

“Cenobio had got a large lot of cochineal from a crafty trader at Oaxaca. It was cachéd about two leagues from the hacienda in the hills, and a vessel was to drop into the mouth of the Medellin to take it on board.

“A party of us were engaged to carry it across to the coast; and, as the cargo was very valuable, we were all of us armed to the teeth, with orders from the patrone to defend it at all hazards. His men were just the fellows who would obey that order, coming, as it did, from Cenobio.

“The Government somehow or other got wind of the affair, and slipped a strong detachment out of Vera Cruz in time to intercept us. We met them on the other side of this very hill, where a road strikes off towards Medellin.”

“Well! and what followed?”

“Why, the battle lasted nearly an hour; and, after having lost half a score of their best men, the valiant lancers rode back to Vera Cruz quicker than they came out of it.”

“And the smugglers?”

“Carried the goods safe on board. Three of them—poor fellows!—are lying not far off, and I came near sharing their luck. I have a lance-hole through my thigh, here, that pains me at this very moment.”

My ear at this moment caught the sound of dogs barking hoarsely below. Horses of the cavalcade commenced neighing, answered by others from the adjacent fields, who recognised their old companions.

“It must be near night,” I remarked to Raoul.

“I think, about sunset, Captain,” rejoined he. “It feels about that time.”