Ayacanora's delight was a horse. The use of tame animals at all was
a daily wonder to her; but that a horse could be ridden was the crowning
miracle of all; and a horse she would ride, and after plaguing Amyas for
one in vain (for he did not want to break her pretty neck), she proposed
confidentially to Yeo to steal one, and foiled in that, went to the
vicar and offered to barter all her finery for his broken-kneed pony.
But the vicar was too honest to drive so good a bargain, and the matter
ended, in Amyas buying her a jennet, which she learned in a fortnight to
ride like a very Gaucho.

And now awoke another curious slumbering reminiscence. For one day, at
Lady Grenville's invitation, the whole family went over to Stow; Mrs.
Leigh soberly on a pillion behind the groom, Ayacanora cantering round
and round upon the moors like a hound let loose, and trying to make
Amyas ride races with her. But that night, sleeping in the same room
with Mrs. Leigh, she awoke shrieking, and sobbed out a long story how
the "Old ape of Panama," her especial abomination, had come to her
bedside and dragged her forth into the courtyard, and how she had
mounted a horse and ridden with an Indian over great moors and high
mountains down into a dark wood, and there the Indian and the horses
vanished, and she found herself suddenly changed once more into a
little savage child. So strong was the impression, that she could not be
persuaded that the thing had not happened, if not that night, at least
some night or other. So Mrs. Leigh at last believed the same, and told
the company next morning in her pious way how the Lord had revealed in
a vision to the poor child who she was, and how she had been exposed in
the forests by her jealous step-father, and neither Sir Richard nor his
wife could doubt but that hers was the true solution. It was probable
that Don Xararte, though his home was Panama, had been often at Quito,
for Yeo had seen him come on board the Lima ship at Guayaquil, one
of the nearest ports. This would explain her having been found by the
Indians beyond Cotopaxi, the nearest peak of the Eastern Andes, if, as
was but too likely, the old man, believing her to be Oxenham's child,
had conceived the fearful vengeance of exposing her in the forests.

Other little facts came to light one by one. They were all connected
(as was natural in a savage) with some animal or other natural object.
Whatever impressions her morals or affections had rec