ot no notion what--"

"Hold your tongue, Quashy," interrupted Lawrence, "why, your description
of such things makes one shiver. Let us hope we may have no experience
of them and enjoy our comforts while we may."

"Dat's true flosuffy, massa," returned the negro, helping himself to
more guanaco, and offering some on the end of his fork to Manuela, who
accepted the same with her usual ready smile, which, however, on this
occasion, expanded into an uncontrollable little laugh.

Lawrence was perplexed, and so was Quashy, for the quiet little Indian
was not given to giggling at trifles, much less to laughing at nothing.
Lawrence observed, however, that the girl did not reach out her hand
with her usual graceful action, but on the contrary gave her arm an
awkward twist which obliged the negro to stretch needlessly far over
towards her in handing the meat.

The result was that a pannikin of coffee which Quashy had placed on his
plate--the plate being in his lap--began to tilt over. Before any one
could warn him it overturned, causing the poor man to spring up with a
yell as the hot liquid drenched his legs. Of course every one laughed.
People always do at such mild mishaps. As the coffee was not too hot,
and there was more in the kettle, Quashy joined in the laugh while he
wiped his garments, and afterwards replenished his pannikin.

But a new light began to force itself upon Lawrence. "Can it be," he
thought, "that she did that on purpose?--that she saw the pannikin was
tilting, and--no, that's impossible!"

He looked earnestly at the girl. She had recovered her gravity by that
time, and was quietly eating her supper with downcast eyes.
"Impossible," he repeated in thought, "so unlike her, and so very unlike
the Indian character." Nevertheless his perplexity remained, and when
he went to sleep that night, after gazing long and earnestly up at the
bright stars and at the white summits of the Andes which rose in awful
grandeur above him, he dreamed that while Quashy was sitting sound
asleep with his head on his knees in front of the fire, Manuela availed
herself of the opportunity to pour an ocean of hot coffee down his back!

Starting up wide awake at this, he found that Quashy lay beside him,
sleeping quietly on his back, that Pedro was similarly engaged, that the
Indian girl had disappeared into her dormitory, that the giant's castle
looked more splendidly real than ever in the rising moonlight, and that
no sou