About a month after in San Augustin a small two-masted vessel--a goleta--might have been observed standing on tacks off the coast of Oaxaca, as if working against the land wind to make to the mouth of Rio Tecoyama--a stream which runs into the Pacific near the south-western corner of that State. Only sharp eyes could have seen the schooner; for it was night, and the night was a very dark one. There were eyes sharply on the lookout for her, however, anxiously scanning the horizon to leeward, some of them through glasses. On an elevated spot among the mangroves, by the river's mouth, a party was assembled, in all about a score individuals. They were mostly men, though not exclusively; three female figures being distinguishable, as forming part of the group. Two of them had the air, and wore the dress, of ladies, somewhat torn and travel-stained; the third was in the guise of a maid-servant attending them. They were the Condesa Almonte the Don Luisa Valverde, and her ever faithful Pepita. Among the men were six with whom the reader has acquaintance. Don Ignacio, Kearney, Rock, Rivas, Jose, and he who had been major-domo in the old monastery, baptismally named Gregorio. Most of the others, undescribed, had also spent some time in the establishment with the monks while playing the part of Free Lances. They were, in fact, a remnant of the band--now broken up and dispersed. But why! When last seen it looked as though their day of triumph had come, or was at all events near. So would it have been but for a betrayal, through which the _pronunciamento_ had miscarried, or rather did not come off. The Dictator, well informed about it--further warned by what occurred at San Augustin--had poured troops over the Sierras into Oaxaca in force sufficient to awe the leaders of the intended insurrection. It was but by the breadth of a hair that his late Cabinet Minister, and those who accompanied him, were able to escape to the sequestered spot where we find them on the shore of the South Sea. To Alvarez, chief of the Pintos, or "spotted Indians," were they indebted for safe conduct thither; he himself having adroitly kept clear of all compromise consequent on that grito unraised. Furthermore, he had promised to provide them with a vessel in which they might escape out of the country; and it was for this they were now on the lookout. When Ruperto Rivas, gazing through that same telescope he had given Florence Kearney to make survey of the valley of Mexico, cried out, "La goleta!" every eye around him brightened, every heart beat joyously. Still more rejoiced were they when, after an hour's tacking against the land breeze, the goleta got inside the estuary of the stream, and working up, brought to by the edge of the mangroves.