What is also common enough in that country, it was surmounted by a _mirador_, or "belvedere." Standing less than half a mile distant from the soldier's _cuartel_, the commandant found it convenient to make use of it as his headquarters.

A small guard in the _saguan_, or covered entrance below, with a sentinel stationed outside the gate in front, indicated this.
There was no family inside, wife, woman, or child; for the colonel, still a young man, was a bachelor.

Only _peons_ in the field, grooms and other servants around the stables, with domestics in the dwelling-- all, male and female, being Indians of the race known as "Indios mansos"-- brown-skinned and obedient.
But though at this time there was no living lady to make her soft footsteps heard within the walls of the commandant's dwelling, the portrait of a lovely girl hung against the side of the main _sola_, and on this his American guest had more than once gazed in silent admiration.

It showed signs of having been recently painted, which was not strange, since it was the likeness of Colonel Miranda's sister, a few years younger than himself--at the time on a visit to some relatives in a distant part of the Republic.

Frank Hamersley's eyes never rested on it without his wishing the original at home.
The two gentlemen upon the housetop were leisuring away the time in the indulgence of a cigar, watching the water-fowl that swam and plunged on the bosom of the broad shallow stream, listening to the hoarse croakings of pelicans and the shriller screams of the _guaya_ cranes.