my cigarette. “That was my first experience with that tobacco, and, indeed, my first smell of its peculiar odor, and I have never forgotten it. I dined that evening with the old senor and was introduced to his family; his wife, a Mexican lady prematurely aged--as they all are, two daughters, handsome as angels, and was shown the picture of their son, a young man who was then being educated in Paris. They were delightful people, especially to one who had been trucking for weeks across the dusty plains of Chihuahua, with only _peons_ and mules for company, and we had a fiery Mexican dinner, spiced with the jokes of the village priest, who was an honored guest. At ten, with the hearty wishes of the whole family, and after the elaborate Mexican custom of withdrawal, I left them. As I sauntered out in the moonlight I could not shut out of my mind the brutish face of the convict in the mine. Perhaps the round faces and handsome eyes of the senor's pretty daughters may have emphasized the memory of the convict's ugly head; otherwise I was in a happy mood. “I turned the corner of the street and entered a short dark lane that led toward the prison stockade. There was an occasional _adobe_ house, but the street was mostly lined with the miserable mud _jacals_ of the poorer Mexicans. I had hardly gotten well into it when I sniffed the same pungent odor that the convict's cigarette had given out. It startled me a trifle, conjuring up, as it did, the hideous mental picture of the man. I had but just realized this association when I heard the clanging of the cathedral bells in that hurried, nervous manner which has alarm in its every note--for the tone of a bell always partakes of the state that its ringer is in. I heard the sound of approaching voices, loud and fierce, mixed with the alarming notes of the bells, and I stepped into the dark doorway of the nearest house. Next, there was the spatting of bare feet on the hard street, and a yelling crowd hurriedly rushed by my hiding-place, leaving a trailing smell of the same tobacco. I noticed the gleam of white handles in the moon-lighted street that I had seen in the yellow light of the mine, and then I knew that the convicts had revolted, and that they were armed with the pick-axes I had sold the mining company. “The bells continued to clang out their terror, and the distant shouting became blended into the continuous murmur that you hear from a distant crowd of excited people. Once in a while the roar of an _escopeta_ would be heard, and soon I saw a magenta glow in the sky, and I knew the town had been fired. Then followed the rapid snapping of pistols, and soon the bellow of the old brass _escopetas_ denoted that the guards had mustered, and that there was an organized resistance to the revolt. All this occurred quicker than I can tell it. I concluded to get back into the broad street I had just come out of, for if there is to be shooting, I want a clear space and as much light as I can get.