Is that a lake out of which rises the well-outlined range of nearer hills? or a sea, throwing up billows of foam and shadow, with islands of green glimpsing their shapes in the placid waters that encircle their feet? And ships, with well-fashioned hulls and wide-spreading sails, and pictured rocks, and beating breakers, and lifeboats with men tugging at the oars. No! it is only mirage, a pretty picture written with the electric pen of nature upon the parchment hot from the press of her untongued fancies. In her luring tale strong men have trusted themselves to fatal deception, and beasts, with lapping tongues, and knotted with water greed, have gnashed their teeth at her beautiful garments of fateful film, and lain down to die. Art has been outvied in pictorial effects, for she filters her shadows from daintiest clouds, and borrows her bath of oscurial glints from the unfathomed deeps of heaven. Even austere science hides his forged shackles shamedly away, and turns with unsatisfied scorn from the flitting gleam of her mocking brow. “It is only mirage, one of nature’s cleverest tricks; and what more is life?” comes once and again from parched lips and longing eyes. For, although water, sweet and cool, drips from an _olla_ near at hand, yet, stretched upon a bed carefully prepared of finely-stripped rawhide, placed upon the well-beaten and smooth earth, under the sheltering roof of a _ramada_ connecting two sections of the Gonzales _casa_, lies David Morning, hot with fever, and still unable to leave his couch. A little apart, and softly swaying in her hammock of scarlet and gold, one foot lightly touching the ground, half reclines the small, undulating figure of Murella Gonzales. The ancient blood of Castile had never been suffered by the Gonzales family to mingle, with the sanction of the church, with ignobler currents. The late Señor Don Pedro, although only possessed of the estate of a prosperous Mexican cattle rancher, was yet a Hidalgo of Hidalgoes, who could have covered the walls of his _casa_ with his quarterings. As for his wife, was she not an Alvarado? and—Santa Maria!—what more would you have in the way of blood? Certainly, from her arched instep to her wealth of blue-black hair, the Señorita Murella was a wondrously beautiful maiden. “Murella,” spoke the sick man, turning his emaciated face toward the girl, “during the early days of my illness, I gave you a letter to mail, do you remember?” “Si, señor.” “Do you remember how many days ago, Murella?” “Si, señor, seventeen day,” and the small ears deepened red behind the creamy oval face. “Did you give Jose the letter to post?” “Si, señor.” “You are very kind, señorita, and I thank you.” The girl glanced swiftly across the court at an open door wherein stood the madroña, the customary shawl of black Spanish lace drawn tightly across her mouth, leaving two shining black eyes fixed steadily upon her.