En el sueno dichoso prove---- Delicias, rodear mi existencia. CHAPTER XI Tea made of Castillian rose petals, and all the other little helps of the herb family, were brewed and steamed in the kitchen of the ranch for the saving of Raquel from the grasp of a strength-sapping fever. Conscience-stricken, Ana fought and argued against sending for Rafael. Every hour of the day and night she was willing to watch and work, if only Raquel's illness might pass without the cause of it being known; and she was certain that the cause was the shock of learning how narrowly she had escaped kidnapping at the hands of Rafael's enemy. Sometimes, indeed, Raquel did murmur in her sleep of "Padre Libertad" and the water surging over her head; and then again it was "the altar--the altar--and the blood on the tiles of the temple"; then "the ring--the ring--the ring." Sometimes she would moan that the beautiful one with the happiness must not receive the ring--never the ring of Aztec witchery! Then her words would trail along in inarticulate whispers, and sink into brief periods of slumber. Old Polonia, listening and watching, heard all. Of Padre Libertad and the dream of the water she cared not anything. Of the ring she understood, and was afraid lest a name be uttered. But when the girl moaned of the blood on the altar and on the floor of the temple, the old creature dropped in a cowering heap and screamed with fear, and begged with tears that the husband would come, and that a padre must come, for it was all of no use to do any more of anything; and that the mother of Dona Raquel had come from--from death, to tell of hidden things to her daughter, and it meant that death was in the home with them, and that Dona Raquel would never again sing with the birds, or gallop across the mesas! Ana, trembling with fright and this assurance, almost smothered old Polonia, that the others might not hear the wild prophecy, but without further delay she sent a letter to Rafael, and the man who bore it was to spare neither horses nor himself on the errand. The man rode well, and made only one halt to change a horse at a ranch. The sheriff of Los Angeles County, and many owners of ranches, were there. The sheriff looked at the rider and his reeking horse carefully. "From where do you come?" he asked, and the man jerked his thumb toward the south. "San Joaquin." "What's up there?" "Not anything, senor." It never entered his head that a woman sick at the San Joaquin ranch would have interest for a party of horsemen who looked as if out for a hunt. But the party exchanged glances. One of them, a farmer who knew him, stepped forward. "Where do you ride in such haste, if nothing is up?" he asked. "I take a letter to Don Rafael; his wife is sick." "Where?" "At San Joaquin ranch, senor. Adios!" He had his foot in the stirrup, when the sheriff laid his hand on his arm.