Absorbed in such reflections, I rode on for some distance through the rocky defiles and over the alternating plains--absolutely sterile and verdureless--which some parts of the great _mesa central_ present. On the summit of a small eminence I beheld yet another cross--a large wooden structure, which, however, had fallen from its base of loose rocks and lay upon the ground. Old Jose, my servant, was some distance behind assisting the mule-driver with my baggage with a refractory mule, and there was no one to say why the cross had been erected. The dusk was rapidly falling and we had yet some leagues to my objective-point. But there was something pathetic about the lone, fallen cross, and I felt loath to pass and leave it there, prone. Dismounting, I looped the long bridle over a projecting rock, and, ascending the eminence, took hold of the fallen cross, exerting my strength to raise it. It was large and heavy, and the footing on the slippery rock made it difficult, but at length I managed to lift it up and put it in position, piling heavy stones round its base to keep it there. Engaged in this self-imposed task, I did not observe that my horse--a spirited animal I had bought some months before--had freed its bridle from the rock below, and when I looked round it was just breaking into a gentle trot away across the desert! At this juncture old Jose rode up with the mule-driver and took in the situation, and I directed the latter individual to tie up his pack-mule and pursue my horse at all speed. "This cross," said Jose, in response to my questions, "was placed here when I was a boy," and he recounted how it had been erected in memory of an old Spaniard, a rich landowner of that region, who had been murdered there by the lover of his wife; she a beautiful young Mexican woman. The details of the history are too long to record here, but according to the legend current among the people, which Jose recounted, the spirit of the penitent wife visited the cross at evening, and hung a phantom wreath of white flowers upon it. "But," added the old _peon_, whose diction and ideas, notwithstanding his superstition, were superior to his kind generally, "the cross has never fallen before, and when from afar I saw the senor lifting it up I was astonished. But it is a blessed act, and no evil can now befall the senor!"