I gladly let him assist Demetria to her seat on the side-saddle, for that was perhaps the last personal service he would be able to render her. The poor old fellow was crying, I believe, his utterance was so husky. Before leaving I gave him on a scrap of paper my address in Montevideo, and bade him take it to Don Florentino Blanco with a request to write me a letter in the course of the next two or three days to inform me of Don Hilario's movements. We then trotted softly away over the sward, and in about half an hour struck the road leading from Rocha to Montevideo. This we followed till daylight, scarcely pausing once from our swift gallop, and a hundred times during that dark ride over a country utterly unknown to me I blessed the little witch Cleta; for never was there a more steady, sure-footed beast than the ugly roan that carried my companion, and when we drew rein in the pale morning light he seemed fresh as when we started. We then left the highway and rode across country in a north-westerly direction for a distance of eight or nine miles, for I was anxious to be far away from public roads and from the prying, prating people that use them. About eleven o'clock that morning we had breakfast at a _rancho,_ then rode on again till we came to a forest of scattered thorn-trees growing on the slopes of a range of hills. It was a wild, secluded spot, with water and good pasturage for the horses and pleasant shade for ourselves; so, after unsaddling and turning loose our horses to feed, we sat down to rest under a large tree with our backs against its portly trunk. From our shady retreat we commanded a splendid view of the country over which we had been riding all the morning, extending for many leagues behind us, and while I smoked my cigar I talked to my companion, calling her attention to the beauty of that wide, sunlit prospect. “Do you know, Demetria,” I said, “when the long winter evenings come, and I have plenty of leisure, I intend writing a history of my wanderings in the Banda Oriental, and I will call my book _The Purple Land;_ for what more suitable name can one find for a country so stained with the blood of her children? You will never read it, of course, for I shall write it in English, and only for the pleasure it will give to my own children--if I ever have any--at some distant date, when their little moral and intellectual stomachs are prepared for other food than milk. But you will have a very important place in my narrative, Demetria, for during these last days we have been very much to each other. And perhaps the very last chapter will recount this wild ride of ours together, flying from that evil genius Hilario to some blessed refuge far away beyond the hills and woods and the blue line of the horizon. For when we reach the capital I believe--I think--I know, in fact--”