"Oh, let me, let me die with you!" Don Melchior said, clasping his hands imploringly. "No," Doña Emilia repeated, "you must leave us." "The night is getting on; I implore you, Melchior to be gone!" the maiden exclaimed. The young man hesitated, and a violent combat took place in his heart. "It is your wish," he muttered, with hesitation. "In the name of our love, I command you!" "Your will be done. Bless me, madam, for I shall return, and for your sake attempt impossibilities." Doña Emilia wiped away the tears that ran down her cheeks against her will. "Bless you, my son!" she said, in a voice choked by sobs. "God alone knows the future, Melchior. I thank you for not having deserted us. Embrace your betrothed; perhaps this first kiss will be the last." The two young people fell into each other's arms. "And now, farewell," Doña Emilia continued. "Begone, you must begone!" Don Melchior tore himself with difficulty from the maiden's clasp. "Oh, not farewell!" he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling with hope. "We shall meet again," and he tottered out of the room. "Mother, mother," Doña Diana said, throwing herself wildly into Doña Emilia's arms, "oh, now I wish to die!" "Poor child!" her mother murmured, as she covered her with kisses. "Take patience; we have but a few hours longer to suffer." CHAPTER XXXVII. THE AMBUSH. THE provost marshal recognized the inutility of further search, and, despairing of recapturing the fugitive, whom he supposed to be hidden in the irregular masses of rock that bordered the stream, collected his men, and gave them orders to close up, after bidding them keep the prisoner's escape temporarily a secret, as he himself intended to tell the general what had occurred when the latter asked at his hands the prisoner confided to him. An hour later he entered the canyon, and rejoined the main body of the army. General Sandoval, although he had nearly twenty thousand men under his orders, perceived, almost immediately after he invested Coahuila, that with soldiers like his, badly armed, worse disciplined, and completely deficient in the necessary articles for a regular siege, he would never succeed in storming a town defended by a garrison of veteran troops, and commanded by one of the best generals of the Spanish army. He therefore converted the siege into a blockade, contenting himself with cutting off the enemy's communications with the interior, and hoping finally to reduce him by famine. But about this time he received a despatch from General Iturbide. After informing him fully of the events that had occurred, which had, in a few days, changed the state of affairs, and destroyed the power of Spain throughout the entire viceroyalty, the general told him that the Spaniards now held but two points on the Mexican territory--the fortress of San Juan de Ulúa, near Veracruz, and the town of Coahuila. Ulúa but slightly troubled the new chief of the Mexican government.