But in vain, during the whole of that day, was the most diligent search made throughout the town for the fugitive Carlist. Every place where he was likely to conceal himself, the taverns and lower class of posadas, the parts of the town inhabited by doubtful and disreputable characters, the houses of several suspected Carlists, were in turn visited, but not a trace of Baltasar could be found, and the night came without any better success. Herrera was furious, and bitterly reproached himself for his imprudence in leaving the prisoner alone even for a moment. His chief hope, a very faint one, now was, that Baltasar would be detected when endeavouring to leave the town. Strict orders were given to the sentries at the gates, to observe all persons going out of Pampeluna, and to stop any of suspicious appearance, or who could not give a satisfactory account of themselves. The hour of noon, upon the day subsequent to Baltasar's disappearance, was near at hand, and the peasants who daily visited Pampeluna with the produce of their farms and orchards, were already preparing to depart. The presence of Cordova's army, promising them a great accession of custom, and the temporary absence from the immediate vicinity of the Carlist troops, who frequently prevented their visiting Christino towns with their merchandise, had caused an unusual concourse of country-people to Pampeluna during the few days that the Christino army had already been quartered there. Each morning, scarcely were the gates opened when parties of peasants, and still more numerous ones of short-petticoated, brown-legged peasant women, entered the town, and pausing upon the market-place, proceeded to arrange the stores of fowls, fruit, vegetables, and similar rustic produce, which they had brought on mules and donkeys, or in large heavy baskets upon their heads. Long before the sun had attained a sufficient height to cast its beams into the broad cool-looking square upon which the market was held, a multitude of stalls had been erected, and were covered with luscious fruits and other choice products of the fertile soil of Navarre. Piles of figs bursting with ripeness; melons, green and yellow, rough and smooth; tomatas; scarlet and pulpy; grapes in glorious bunches of gold and purple; cackling poultry and passive rabbits; the whole intermingled with huge heaps of vegetables, and nose-gays of beautiful flowers, were displayed in wonderful profusion to the gaze of the admiring soldiers, who soon thronged to the scene of bustle. As the morning advanced, numerous maid-servants, trim, arch-looking damsels, with small neatly-shod feet, basket on arm, and shading their complexion from the increasing heat of the sun under cotton parasols of ample dimensions, tripped along between the rows of sellers, pausing here and there to bargain for fruit or fowl, and affecting not to hear the remarks of the soldiers, who lounged in their neighbourhood, and expressed their