He sat on the floor, holding the drum in his lap and touching the instrument lightly from time to time.

His vacant gaze was fixed upon a small heap of dying embers, nearly in the centre of the room and beneath the hatchway.
Occasionally he raised his head to glance at the wall opposite him.

The interior of the estufa appeared quite different from what it did on the day when Shyuote's peep into it was so poorly rewarded.

Its walls had been whitened, and were in addition covered with strange-looking paintings.

The floor was partly occupied by a remarkable display of equally strange objects.
The painting in front of which the old man sat, and at which he gazed from time to time, represented in the first place a green disk surrounded by short red rays, which three white squares, bordered with black, converted into something like the rude semblance of a human face.
This disk stood for a picture of the sun.