After I had engaged my rooms the _posadero_ informed me (in answer to my inquiry) that General Salvador Carmen (this could be none other than my old friend) was with the army at La Victoria, but that he had a house at Caracas where his wife and family were then residing. He also mentioned incidentally that several Spanish officers of distinction, who had arrived a few days previously, were staying in the _posada_--doubtless the same spoken of by Van Voorst. The day being still young, for I had left La Guayra betimes, I thought I could not do better than call on Juanita, who lived only a stone's throw from the Hotel de los Generales. She recognized me at once and received me--almost literally--with open arms. When I essayed to kiss her hand, she offered me her cheek. "After this long time! It is a miracle!" she exclaimed. "We mourned for you as one dead; for we felt sure that if you were living we should have had news of you. How glad Salvador will be! Where have you been all this time, and why, oh why, did you not write?" "I have been in the heart of the Andes, and I did not write because I was as much cut off from the world as if I had been in another planet." "You must have a long story to tell us, then. But I am forgetting the most important question of all. Are you still a bachelor?" "Worse than that, Juanita. I am a widower. I have lost the sweetest wife--" "_Misericordia! Misericordia! Pobre amigo mio!_ Oh, how sorry I am; how much I pity you!" And the dear lady, now a stately and handsome matron, fell a-weeping out of pure tenderness, and I had to tell her the sad story of the quenching of Quipai and Angela's death. But the telling of it, together with Juanita's sympathy, did me good, and I went away in much better spirits than I had come. Salvador, she said, would be back in a few days, and she much regretted not being able to offer me quarters; it was contrary to the custom of the place and Spanish etiquette for ladies to entertain gentlemen visitors during their husbands' absence. After leaving Juanita I walked round by the guard-house in which I had been imprisoned, and through the ruins where Carmen and I had hidden when we were making our escape. They suggested some stirring memories--Carera (who, as I learned from Juanita, had been dead several years) and his chivalrous friendship; Salvador and his reckless courage; our midnight ride; Gahra and the bivouac by the mountain-tarn (poor Gahra, what had become of him?); Majia and his guerillas; Griscelli and his blood-hounds (how I hated that man, but surely by this time he had got his deserts); Gondocori and Queen Mamcuna; the man-killer; and Quipai.