In the kitchen were several people sipping _maté_, Lucero's children and grandchildren, also his wife, a grey old dame with dim-looking eyes. But then my host was old in years himself, only, like Ulysses, he still possessed the unquenched fire and energy of youth in his soul, while time bestowed infirmities together with wrinkles and white hairs on his helpmate. He introduced me to her in a manner that brought the modest flame to my cheeks. Standing before her, he said that he had met me at the _pulpería_ and had put to me the question which a simple old countryman must ask of every traveller from Montevideo--What the news was? Then, assuming a dry, satirical tone, which years of practice would not enable me to imitate, he proceeded to give my fantastical answer, garnished with much original matter of his own. “Señora,” I said, when he had finished, “you must not give me credit for all you have heard from your husband. I only gave him brute wool, and he has woven it for your delight into beautiful cloth.” “Hear him! Did I tell you what to expect, Juana?” cried the old man, which made me blush still more. We then settled down to _maté_ and quiet conversation. Sitting in the kitchen on the skull of a horse--a common article of furniture in an Oriental _rancho_--was a boy about twelve years old, one of Lucero's grandchildren, with a very beautiful face. His feet were bare and his clothes very poor, but his soft dark eyes and olive face had that tender, half-melancholy expression often seen in children of Spanish origin, which is always so strangely captivating. “Where is your guitar, Cipriano?” said his grandfather, addressing him, whereupon the boy rose and fetched a guitar, which he first politely offered to me. When I had declined it, he seated himself once more on his polished horse-skull and began to play and sing. He had a sweet boy's voice, and one of his ballads took my fancy so much that I made him repeat the words to me while I wrote them down in my notebook, which greatly gratified Lucero, who seemed proud of the boy's accomplishment. Here are the words translated almost literally, therefore without rhymes, and I only regret that I cannot furnish my musical readers with the quaint, plaintive air they were sung to: O let me go--O let me go, Where high are born amidst the hills The streams that gladden all the south, And o'er the grassy desert wide, Where slakes his thirst the antlered deer, Hurry towards the great green ocean. The stony hills--the stony hills, With azure air-flowers on their crags, Where cattle stray unowned by man; The monarch of the herd there seems No bigger than my hand in size, Roaming along the tall, steep summit. I know them well--I know them well, Those hills of God, and they know me; When I go there they are serene, But when the stranger visits them Dark rain-clouds gather round their tops-- Over the earth goes forth the tempest.