still! Before
her was transpiring a terrible scene. Liberta was in the grasp of a man
of tall stature, who had thrown him down; stifled sighs proved that a
robust hand was pressing the lips of the Indian.

The young girl, summoning all her courage, was about to cry out, when
she saw the two men rise! The negro was looking fixedly at his
adversary.

"It is you, then! it is you!" exclaimed he.

And he followed this man in a strange stupefaction. They arrived beneath
the balcony of Sarah. Suddenly, before she had time to utter a cry,
Martin Paz appeared to her, like a phantom from another world; and, like
the negro when overthrown by the Indian, the young girl, bending before
the glance of Martin Paz, could in her turn only repeat these words,

"It is you, then! it is you!"

The young Indian fixed on her his motionless eyes, and said:

"Does the betrothed hear the sound of the festival? The guests are
thronging into the saloons to see happiness radiate from her
countenance! Is it then a victim, prepared for the sacrifice, who is
about to present herself to their impatient eyes? Is it with these
features, pale with sorrow, with eyes in which sparkle bitter tears,
that the young girl is to appear herself before her betrothed?"

Martin Paz spoke thus, in a tone full of sympathizing sadness, and Sarah
listened vaguely as to those harmonies which we hear in dreams!

The young Indian resumed with infinite sweetness:

"Since the soul of the young girl is in mourning, let her look beyond
the house of her father, beyond the city where she suffers and weeps;
beyond the mountains, the palm-trees lift up their heads in freedom, the
birds strike the air with an independent wing; men have immensity to
live in, and the young girls may unfold their spirits and their hearts!"

Sarah raised her head toward Martin Paz. The Indian had drawn himself up
to his full height, and with his arm extended toward the summits of the
Cordilleras, was pointing out to the young girl the path to liberty.

Sarah felt herself constrained by an irresistible force. Already the
sound of voices reached her; they approached her chamber; her father was
undoubtedly about to enter; perhaps her lover would accompany him! The
Indian suddenly extinguished the lamp suspended above his head. A
whistling, similar to the cry of the _cilguero_, and reminding one of
that heard on the Plaza-Mayor, pierced the silent darkness of night; the
young girl swooned.

Th