who remained with the
horses, advanced towards the front of the house, firing as rapidly as
they could, in order, by the smoke and by attracting the attention of
the besieged, to cover the manoeuvre of their comrades. The
stratagem was completely successful. Whilst Don Manuel and his
servants were answering the fire of their assailants with some effect,
the four men got round the house, climbed over a wall, found a ladder
in an out-building, and applied it to one of the back-windows, which
they burst open. A shout of triumph, and the report of their pistols,
informed their companions of their entrance, and the next moment one
of them threw open the front door, and the guerillas rushed
tumultuously into the house.

It was about two hours after these occurrences, that Luis Herrera and
Mariano Torres arrived at Don Manuel's residence. They had been
delayed upon the road by the disturbed state of the country, which
rendered it difficult to procure conveyances, and had at last been
compelled to hire a couple of indifferent horses, upon which,
accompanied by a muleteer, they had made but slow progress across the
mountainous district they had to traverse. The news of the Carlist
insurrection had inspired Luis with some alarm on account of his
father, whom he knew to be in the highest degree obnoxious to many of
that party. At the same time he had not yet heard of the perpetration
of any acts of violence, and was far from anticipating the spectacle
which met his eyes when he at last came in view of the Casa Herrera.
With an exclamation of horror he forced his horse, up a bank
bordering the road, and, followed by Mariano, galloped towards the
house.

Of the dwelling, so lately a model of rural ease and comfort, the four
walls alone were now standing. The roof had fallen in, and the tongues
of flame which licked and flickered round the apertures where windows
had been, showed that the devouring element was busy completing its
work. The adjoining stables, owing to their slighter construction, and
to the combustibles they contained, had been still more rapidly
consumed. Of them, a heap of smoking ashes and a few charred beams and
blackened bricks were all that remained. The paling of the tastefully
distributed garden was broken down in several places; the parterres
and melon-beds were trampled and destroyed by the hoofs of the Carlist
horses, which had seemingly been turned in there to feed, or perhaps
been ridden through it in