to ward off the blows with her hands.

"Ah! You're beginning, are you?" cried Dona Consolacion, with savage
joy, and from lento, she passed to allegro vivace.

Sisa cried out and drew up first one foot and then the other.

"Will you dance, accursed Indian!" and the whip whistled.

Sisa let herself fall to the floor, trying to cover her feet,
and looking at her tormenter with haggard eyes. Two lashes on the
shoulders forced her to rise with screams.

Her thin chemise was torn, the skin broken and the blood flowing.

This excited Dona Consolacion still more.

"Dance! Dance!" she howled, and seizing Sisa with one hand, while
she beat her with the other, she commenced to leap about again.

At length Sisa understood, and followed, moving her arms without
rhythm or measure. A smile of satisfaction came to the lips of the
horrible woman--the smile of a female Mephistopheles who has found
an apt pupil: hate, scorn, mockery, and cruelty were in it; a burst
of demoniacal laughter could not have said more.

Absorbed by her delight in this spectacle, the alfereza did not know
that her husband had arrived until the door was violently thrown open
with a kick.

The alferez was pale and morose. When he saw what was going on, he
darted a terrible glance at his wife, then quietly put his hand on
the shoulder of the strange dancer, and stopped her motion. Sisa,
breathing hard, sat down on the floor. He called the orderly.

"Take this woman away," he said; "see that she is properly cared for,
and has a good dinner and a good bed. To-morrow she is to be taken
to Senor Ibarra's."

Then he carefully closed the door after them, pushed the bolt, and
approached his wife.

XXXIV.

RIGHT AND MIGHT.

It was ten o'clock in the evening. The first rockets were slowly
going up in the dark sky, where bright-colored balloons shone like new
stars. On the ridge-poles of the houses men were seen armed with bamboo
poles, with pails of water at hand. Their dark silhouettes against the
clear gray of the night seemed phantoms come to share in the gayety of
men. They were there to look out for balloons that might fall burning.

Crowds of people were going toward the plaza to see the last play
at the theatre. Bengal fires burned here and there, grouping the
merry-makers fantastically.

The grand estrade was magnificently illuminated. Thousands of lights
were fixed round the pillars, hung from the roof and clustered near
the ground