as inscribed an Italian name. Inside were a man with
spectacles, and two women. He approached the door slowly, and summoning
up a resolute spirit, he inquired:--

"Can you tell me, signor, where the family Mequinez is?"

"The engineer Mequinez?" asked the innkeeper in his turn.

"The engineer Mequinez," replied the lad in a thread of a voice.

"The Mequinez family is not in Tucuman," replied the innkeeper.

A cry of desperate pain, like that of one who has been stabbed, formed
an echo to these words.

The innkeeper and the women rose, and some neighbors ran up.

"What's the matter? what ails you, my boy?" said the innkeeper, drawing
him into the shop and making him sit down. "The deuce! there's no reason
for despairing! The Mequinez family is not here, but at a little
distance off, a few hours from Tucuman."

"Where? where?" shrieked Marco, springing up like one restored to life.

"Fifteen miles from here," continued the man, "on the river, at
Saladillo, in a place where a big sugar factory is being built, and a
cluster of houses; Signor Mequinez's house is there; every one knows it:
you can reach it in a few hours."

"I was there a month ago," said a youth, who had hastened up at the cry.

Marco stared at him with wide-open eyes, and asked him hastily, turning
pale as he did so, "Did you see the servant of Signor Mequinez--the
Italian?"

"The Genoese? Yes; I saw her."

Marco burst into a convulsive sob, which was half a laugh and half a
sob. Then, with a burst of violent resolution: "Which way am I to go?
quick, the road! I shall set out instantly; show me the way!"

"But it is a day's march," they all told him, in one breath. "You are
weary; you should rest; you can set out to-morrow."

"Impossible! impossible!" replied the lad. "Tell me the way; I will not
wait another instant; I shall set out at once, were I to die on the
road!"

On perceiving him so inflexible, they no longer opposed him. "May God
accompany you!" they said to him. "Look out for the path through the
forest. A fair journey to you, little Italian!" A man accompanied him
outside of the town, pointed out to him the road, gave him some counsel,
and stood still to watch him start. At the expiration of a few minutes,
the lad disappeared, limping, with his bag on his shoulders, behind the
thick trees which lined the road.

That night was a dreadful one for the poor sick woman. She suffered
atrocious pain, which wrung from her shrieks tha