These worthy men, then, were bivouacked, as we have said, about a league in advance of the Mexican army, and as they liked to take their ease whenever the opportunity offered, they had found nothing better than quartering themselves in a pueblo, whose inhabitants had naturally fled at their approach, and the houses of which the pirates pulled down, in order to procure wood for their campfires. Still, either by accident or some other reason, one house, or rather hut, had escaped the general ruin, and alone remained standing. It was not only untouched, but shut up, and a sentry was stationed before the door. This sentry, however, did not appear to trouble himself much about the orders given him; for being probably annoyed by the sun, whose beams fell vertically on his head, he was lying cozily in the shade of a stall luckily standing opposite the house, and with his musket within reach, was smoking, sleeping, and dreaming, while waiting till his term of duty was over, and a comrade came to take his place. As this house served at this moment as the abode of Doña Carmela, we will ask the reader to enter it with us. The maiden, sad and pensive, was reclining in a hammock suspended before a window, open, in spite of the heat of the day, and her eyes, red with weeping, were invariably fixed on the desolate plain, which the sun parched, and whose sand flashed like diamonds. Of what was the poor girl thinking, while the tears she did not dream of wiping away, coursed down her pallid cheeks, where they traced a furrow? Perhaps at this age, when recollections do not go back beyond yesterday, she remembered in bitterness of spirit the happy days of the Venta del Potrero, where with Tranquil and Lanzi, those two devoted hearts to protect her, all smiled upon her, and the future appeared to her so gentle and calm. Perhaps, too, she thought of the Jaguar, for whom she felt such friendship, or of Colonel Melendez, whose respectful and profound love had made her so often dream involuntarily, in the way maidens dream.