He reached the point where the stream is bridged by the Rimac Pampa, climbed a stairway, and found himself at the edge of that square. The entire district south and east had burned the night before, and the ruins were still smouldering, with small fires here and there in the _débris_ lighting up the plaza, but rendering its greater extent the more obscure. To the north-east, the suburbs of Toco Cachi and Munay Cenca were burning fiercely, but the advance of the conflagration thence had been retarded by the wind, so that between the burning zone and the Tullamayu lay an area yet untouched, while the fire which had swept over him was now in the rear. In the west was a huge, roseate bank of smoke, rolling upward in colossal and endless transformation. Overhead were fragments of sky, densely black, with sickly stars briefly seen, then extinguished by the pallid fleece whirled and driven by the wind. Everywhere above the horizon, a stupendous activity impressive in its silence. Cristoval turned from it oppressed, to listen and reconnoitre before venturing from shelter. About him, gloom and stillness profound, the desolation of vacant streets, the mournfulness of abandonment; and over all, a wan, unnatural twilight. He felt the weight of loneliness and a vague dread of the shadowy thoroughfares and sombre buildings. He shook it off with resolution, and stole out into the street. Not far ahead an intersecting way admitted a narrow illumination from the north. He was within fifty paces of this when a dim figure crossed the light and vanished in the darkness beyond. It appeared and disappeared so quickly and silently that he was uncertain lest he had been deceived by a swirl of smoke. He paused uneasily, unresolved whether to advance or go back. "No Spaniard, that," he reflected, "and _cierto_, not a sentinel! A mere rag of a figure—if not a rag of mine imagination. But what an unholy, shivery manner of gait!—a flit, and ’t was gone. Murder! I had liefer seen a pikeman." He stood for a moment peering and hearkening, then advanced with drawn sword. Arriving at the strip of light, he crossed it hastily, and halted by the wall. Farther up the street was another lighted spot, and he watched it with vigilance. Again the form, seen for an instant, and lost in the gloom. Now, Cristoval’s courage was proof as his own mail against tangible danger, but volatile as ether before the uncanny or mysterious. The fleeting form was both. The cavalier was daunted, and admitted it to himself. But he braced himself with a sign of the cross and stole forward. "After all," he muttered, "belike ’t is naught but some poor devil of a native, burned out and homeless. But the fiend take a man who moveth with so ghastly locomotion! Neither a walk, trot, nor canter. Anyway, he seemeth to have as little appetite for me as I for him, and man or spook, I’ll not crowd him, I swear it!"