'To this illness was I indebted for my second interview with my worthy landlady, Donna Teresa Lopez, who had been invisible since the day on which my lucky stars first guided me to her roof. This worthy woman, who was somewhere between forty and sixty years of age, (Mexican women, be it understood, when once they pass thirty, enter on a career of the most ambiguous antiquity,) had two branches of business, of which she claimed a thorough knowledge--tobacco and medicine. My sickness, therefore, was to her a source of intense gratification. She was everlastingly bringing me some new remedy of her own invention, in spite of which, thanks be to God, and a good constitution, I at length rallied, and grew gradually convalescent. 'One night, while lying half-asleep and half-awake, dreamily promising myself, if the weather were favorable on the morrow, that I would venture out of doors, I fancied I heard a voice, muttering words in my own mother tongue. I rose, and resting on my elbow, listened attentively--but then a profound silence reigned around me. Persuaded, that feeble as I still was, I had mistaken a dream for a reality, I languidly let my head fall back upon my pillow. Scarcely a minute, however, had elapsed, ere a voice whose tone denoted anguish and distress, and which seemed to come from the middle of the room, exclaimed, in distinct English: 'My God! my God! take pity on my anguish, and in mercy help me!' 'Assured this time that I was no longer dreaming, I started up again, and laboring under much excitement, cried out: 'Who is there?' 'Again all was perfectly silent. Just as I was about to jump out of bed and explore the mystery, my eye fell upon a faint streak of light, which glimmered through a crack in the door behind my rocking-chair, near the foot of my bed. From the same direction, also, came the sound of a nervous, unequal, jerking tread, which fully explained a portion of the mystery. It was pretty evident, first, that I had a neighbor; secondly, that he spoke English; and thirdly, that he was either a somnambulist or a soliloquist. 'This discovery, ordinary and common-place enough in itself, for Englishmen and Americans are plentiful enough in Mexico now-a-days, still made a very serious impression on my mind, for the words I had overheard, and above all, the tone in which they were uttered, seemed to imply something mysterious, and to be the key-note of some dramatic fragment. For hours I tossed about, pondering over those words, and day was dawning ere I fell asleep. 'The entrance of my learned landlady with a cup brimful of her latest concoction, awoke me. ''Here, Señor,' said she, presenting the dose to me with a serene air of matronly confidence, 'Here, Señor, is a tea containing no less than seventeen different ingredients; and I have a presentiment that this is the very thing to perfect your cure.' ''Thank you a thousand times,' I said, 'but I feel perfectly well this morning.' ''That is no matter--'