Joaquin’s first impulse was to call aloud upon the name of his young wife. But all was silent. ‘Holy Virgin!’ he exclaimed, as recollection began fully to return to him. ‘Where art thou, Carmencitto?’ he shouted. A low, faint moaning was heard in the neighboring shrubbery. Again, and again, the wretched youth called loudly on Carmencitto. But the only replies he received were the faint moanings, which his foreboding heart, rather than his ear, told him came from the lips of Carmencitto. His suspense became insupportable. He would—he must—learn all. Even though that all confirmed a horrid suspicion that chilled the blood to his very heart. With the fierceness of a starving coyote he gnawed the green hide that confined his arms, and they once released he soon entirely disengaged himself. He sprang to his feet, and rushed in the direction from whence the sounds of distress proceeded. Better had he been smitten with eternal blindness than ever have gazed upon that sad, sad spectacle. Carmencitto lay almost senseless upon the grass. Her modest garments torn to shreds, exposed her fair young bosom, slowly heaving, as if with the latest sobs of expiring life. Her cheeks were colorless. Her lips white as chalk, except where they were dabbled with the crimson blood, that was slowly oozing at every respiration of her heaving breast! In one of her little pale hands she clutched a small gold crucifix, which the villains had overlooked in their lust or haste. As Joaquin burst through the thicket and stood before her, the closed lids of her black eyes slowly opened, and she cast one look full of love and sorrow upon her heart-broken husband. Tearing his black locks he flung himself on his knees by her side, and tenderly raising her, he pressed her to his heart and while he wiped the blood from her lips, his tears fell thick and fast upon her upturned face. ‘Speak to me, oh! speak to me, Carmencitto. My life! My love! Speak! Oh, God, what have I done to deserve this? Speak, dearest Carmencitto,’ and he pressed the form of his young wife again and again close to his heart. But no reply came from those dear lips. Near at hand ran a babbling rivulet. To this Joaquin rushed, and scooping out some water in the hollow of his joined hands, laved with it the face of Carmencitto. But all in vain. Life had forever left that darling form, dearer to him than all the gold that strews the placers of his native land. When Joaquin became certain that she was indeed dead, his grief at first found vent in the most pathetic lamentations; but suddenly pausing, he dashed the teardrops from his eyes, and drawing a dagger from its sheath, he swore upon its cross-hilt eternal vengeance on the ravishers and murderers of his Carmencitto. Then decently arranging her disordered garments, he lifted her sacred form in his arms, and bore it to his home—henceforth forever desolate.