As Captain Carroll urged his horse along the miry road to La Mision Perdida, he was struck with certain changes in the landscape before him other than those wrought by the winter rains.

There were the usual deep gullies and trenches, half-filled with water, in the fields and along the road, but there were ominous embankments and ridges of freshly turned soil, and a scattered fringe of timbers following a cruel, undeviating furrow on the broad grazing lands of the Mision.
But it was not until he had crossed the arroyo that he felt the full extent of the late improvements.

A quick rumbling in the distance, a light flash of steam above the willow copse, that drifted across the field on his right, and he knew that the railroad was already in operation.

Captain Carroll reined in his frightened charger, and passed his hand across his brow with a dazed sense of loss.

He had been gone only four months--yet he already felt strange and forgotten.
It was with a feeling of relief that he at last turned from the high-road into the lane.