being a
sociable, kindly fellow, he felt it incumbent on him to do what in him
lay to lighten the tedium of the long journey to one who, he thought,
must naturally feel very lonely with no companions but men. "Besides,"
he whispered to himself, "she is only an Indian, and of course cannot
construe my attentions to mean anything so ridiculous as love-making--
so, I will speak to her in a fatherly sort of way."

Filled with this idea, as the party came out upon a wide and beautiful
table-land, which seemed like a giant emerald set in a circlet of grand
blue mountains, Lawrence pushed up alongside, and said--

"Poor girl, I fear that such prolonged riding over these rugged passes
must fatigue you." Manuela raised her dark eyes to the youth's face,
and, with a smile that was very slight--though not so slight but that it
revealed a double row of bright little teeth--she replied softly--

"W'at you say?"

"Oh! I forgot, you don't speak English. How stupid I am!" said
Lawrence with a blush, for he was too young to act the "fatherly" part
well.

He felt exceedingly awkward, but, observing that the girl's eyes were
again fixed pensively on the ground, he hoped that she had not noticed
the blush, and attempted to repeat the phrase in Spanish. What he said
it is not possible to set down in that tongue, nor can we gratify the
reader with a translation. Whatever it was, Manuela replied by again
raising her dark eyes for a moment--this time without a smile--and
shaking her head.

Poor Lawrence felt more awkward than ever. In despair he half thought
of making trial of Latin or Greek, when Pedro came opportunely to the
rescue. Looking back he began--

"Senhor Armstrong--"

"I think," interrupted the youth, "that you may dispense with `Senhor.'"

"Nay, I like to use it," returned the guide. "It reminds me so forcibly
of the time when I addressed your good old father thus."

"Well, Senhor Pedro, call me what you please. What were you about to
say?"

"Only that we are now approaching one of the dangerous passes of the
mountains, where baggage-mules sometimes touch the cliffs with their
packs, and so get tilted over the precipices. But our mules are quiet,
and with ordinary care we have nothing to fear."

The gorge in the mountains, which the travellers soon afterwards
entered, fully justified the guide's expression "dangerous." It was a
wild, rugged glen, high up on one side of which the narrow pathway
wound--i