Upon an enthusiastic mind, nothing fixes an impression more deeply than the danger attendant upon an enterprise and the difficulties of accomplishing it, and such I experienced in my attachment to Mariqueta. The remembrance of her beauty, her retiring modesty, and her kindness to an enemy and a stranger, filled my thoughts day after day; while, in the stillness of night, fancy renewed the vision in my dreams. The risks which myself and companions had run in our excursion, produced an order from the commander-in-chief forbidding similar undertakings, except to a certain distance from the town; and often have I rode to the very verge of the precincts, entertaining the flatterer Hope, yet destitute of expectation. It was about three weeks after my visit to the farm that Sidney accompanied me in my ride, and on our return we were overtaken by a storm, which raged with the utmost fury. The rain came down in torrents, and was swept like sheets of foaming spray across the plain. The wind in its fury tore up the trees and scattered the branches in every direction, threatening to crush us beneath their ponderous weight. Completely drenched with rain and worn with the efforts to keep our horses under curb, we arrived at the first village in our homeward path. A straggling place it was, formed of a few miserable cottages, or huts, with a chapel in the centre. We stopped at the wine-house, (the only decent place,) and put our frightened animals into a shed; after which we entered the room appropriated for travellers, and found it was nearly filled with Spaniards. Near the fire were ranged several persons attached to the commissariat department, who had come from the city to bargain with the hunters for cattle. The hunters, arrayed in their _ponchos_ and broad-brimmed hats with small crowns, were mingling with the former and carrying on a traffic, using the most violent gesticulations. Stretched in one corner lay several guerillas with their fusees by their side, ready at a moment’s notice in case of alarm. They were soundly sleeping; but even in this placid state their features retained the most hardened ferocity. Distinct by himself, in another corner, sat a man in the guerilla costume, who on our entering, muffled up his face as if he wished to be concealed from observation. Conviction instantly flashed upon my mind that this was the individual I had been seeking, but prudence dictated that the present moment was no time to recognise him.