"Do you know the _hacienda_, Concepcion, by the town of San Jose ?" "Yes, senora, know it well, the _hacienda_ of Senor Gomez; bring you there to-morrow." "Then show the way," I said, and we started towards the hills.
All that day we travelled over mountains as fast as the mules could carry us, Antonio trotting by our side.

At sundown, having seen nothing more of the brigands, who, I suppose, took it for granted that we were dead or were too idle to follow us far, we reached an Indian hut, where we contrived to buy some wretched food consisting of black _frijole_ beans and _tortilla_ cakes.

That night we slept in a kind of hovel made of open poles with a roof of faggots through which the water dropped on us, for it rained persistently for several hours.

To be more accurate, Emma slept, for my nerves were too shattered by the recollection of our adventure with the brigands to allow me to close my eyes.
I could not rid my mind of the vision of that coach, broken like an eggshell, and of those shattered shapes within it that this very morning had been men full of life and plans, but who to-night were--what?
Nor was it easy to forget that but for the merest chance I might have been one of their company wherever it was gathered now.

To a man with a constitutional objection to every form of violence, and, at any rate in those days, no desire to search out the secrets of Death before his time, the thought was horrible.
Leaving the shelter at dawn I found Antonio and the Indian who owned the hut conversing together in the reeking mist with their _serapes_ thrown across their mouths, which few Mexicans leave uncovered until after the sun is up.