nt. He pushed the inquisitor aside, with a few
hasty words, and, after Guest had finished his meal, offered to show
him his room. It was a dark vaulted closet on the ground-floor,
gaining light from the stable-yard through a barred iron grating. At
the first glimpse it looked like a prison cell; looking more
deliberately at the black tresseled bed, and the votive images hanging
on the wall, it might have been a tomb.

"It is the best," said the landlord. "The Padre Vincento will have
none other on his journey."

"I suppose God protects him," said Guest; "that door don't." He
pointed to the worm-eaten door, without bolt or fastening.

"Ah, what matter! Are we not all friends?"

"Certainly," responded Guest, with his surliest manner, as he returned
to the veranda. Nevertheless, he resolved not to occupy the cell of
the reverend Padre; not from any personal fear of his disreputable
neighbors, though he was fully alive to their peculiarities, but from
the nomadic instinct which was still strong in his blood. He felt he
could not yet bear the confinement of a close room or the propinquity
of his fellow-man. He would rest on the veranda until the moon was
fairly up, and then he would again take to the road.

He was half reclining on the bench, with the slowly closing and opening
lids of some tired but watchful animal, when the sound of wheels,
voices, and clatter of hoofs on the highway arrested his attention, and
he sat upright. The moon was slowly lifting itself over the limitless
stretch of grain-fields before him on the other side of the road, and
dazzling him with its level lustre. He could barely discern a
cavalcade of dark figures and a large vehicle rapidly approaching,
before it drew up tumultuously in front of the fonda.

It was a pleasure party of ladies and gentlemen on horseback and in a
four-horsed char-a-bancs returning to La Mision Perdida. Buchanan,
Raymond, and Garnier were there; Amita and Dorotea in the body of the
char-a-bancs, and Maruja seated on the box. Much to his own
astonishment and that of some others of the party, Captain Carroll was
among the riders. Only Maruja and her mother knew that he was recalled
to refute a repetition of the gossip already circulated regarding his
sudden withdrawal; only Maruja alone knew the subtle words which made
that call so potent yet so hopeless.

Maruja's quick eyes, observant of everything, even under the double
fire of Captain Carroll and Gar