right and went out
to see the great fissures in that treacherous crust of earth upon which
Ehrenberg was built.

I grew afraid, after that, and the idea that the earth would eventually
open and engulf us all took possession of my mind.

My health, already weakened by shocks and severe strains, gave way
entirely. I, who had gloried in the most perfect health, and had a
constitution of iron, became an emaciated invalid.

From my window, one evening at sundown, I saw a weird procession moving
slowly along towards the outskirts of the village. It must be a funeral,
thought I, and it flashed across my mind that I had never seen the
burying-ground.

A man with a rude cross led the procession. Then came some Mexicans with
violins and guitars. After the musicians, came the body of the deceased,
wrapped in a white cloth, borne on a bier by friends, and followed by
the little band of weeping women, with black ribosos folded about their
heads. They did not use coffins at Ehrenberg, because they had none, I
suppose.

The next day I asked Jack to walk to the grave-yard with me. He
postponed it from day to day, but I insisted upon going. At last, he
took me to see it.

There was no enclosure, but the bare, sloping, sandy place was sprinkled
with graves, marked by heaps of stones, and in some instances by rude
crosses of wood, some of which had been wrenched from their upright
position by the fierce sand-storms. There was not a blade of grass, a
tree, or a flower. I walked about among these graves, and close beside
some of them I saw deep holes and whitnened bones. I was quite ignorant
or unthinking, and asked what the holes were.

"It is where the coyotes and wolves come in the nights," said Jack.

My heart sickened as I thought of these horrors, and I wondered if
Ehrenberg held anything in store for me worse than what I had already
seen. We turned away from this unhallowed grave-yard and walked to our
quarters. I had never known much about "nerves," but I began to see
spectres in the night, and those ghastly graves with their coyote-holes
were ever before me. The place was but a stone's throw from us, and the
uneasy spirits from these desecrated graves began to haunt me. I
could not sit alone on the porch at night, for they peered through the
lattice, and mocked at me, and beckoned. Some had no heads, some no
arms, but they pointed or nodded towards the grewsome burying-ground:
"You'll be with us soon, you'll be with us so