daughter--a
very pretty girl: the Indian type there is distinctly handsome. Then he
tried her lover, who seemed willing to exert his influence for the
consideration of a real English gun. Arnold could not spare his own; he
had no other, and the young Indian would not accept promises. So the
matter fell through.

Three years afterwards Arnold was commissioned to seek Cattleya Mossiae
again. Not forgetting the giant, he thought it worth while to take a 'real
English gun' with him, though doubtless the maiden was a wife long since,
and her husband might ask for a more useful present. In due course he
reached the spot--a small Indian village in the mountains, some fifteen
miles from Caracas. The Cattleya was still there, perched aloft, as big as
a hogshead. Arnold's first glance was given to it; then he looked at the
owner's hospitable dwelling. It also was still there, but changed. Tidy it
had never been, but now it was ruinous. None of the village huts could be
seen, standing as they did each in its 'compound'--a bower of palm and
plantains, fruit-trees, above all, flowers. Afterwards he perceived that
they had all been lately rebuilt.

The old Indian survived, but it was not from him that Arnold learned the
story. The Cura told it. There had been a pronunciamiento somewhere in the
country, and the Government sent small bodies of troops--pressgangs, in
fact--to enlist 'volunteers.' One of these came to the village. The
officer in command, a good-looking young man, took up his abode in the
Indian's house and presently made it his headquarters, whence to direct
the man-hunts. Upon that pretext he stayed several weeks, to the delight
of the villagers, who were spared.

But one evening there was an outbreak. The lover rushed along the street,
dripping with blood--the officer, his sword drawn, pursuing. He ran into
his hut and snatched a gun from the wall. But it was too late; the other
cut him down. The day's field work was over--all the Indians had returned.
They seized their machetes, yelling vengeance, and attacked the officer.
But his soldiers also were close by. They ran up, firing as they ran. Some
villagers were killed, more wounded; the place was sacked. Next morning
early the detachment moved off. When the fugitives returning counted their
loss, the pretty daughter of old Jose was missing. The dead lay where they
fell, and she was not among them.

The Cura, an amiable veteran, did not doubt that she had been carr