sleeping
for the benefit of the cool night air,--al fresco. There was no moon,
nor any lamplight, but by the glimmering stars we could see this
strange encampment, which barely left a passage in the middle for the
mule-carts.

[Illustration: 363-18]

Some of the groups were irresistibly droll: here was an old lady, with a
yellow-and-red handkerchief round her head, snoring away, while a negro
wench waved a plaintan-bough to and fro to keep off the mosquitoes,
which thronged the spot from the inducement of a little glimmering lamp
to the Virgin over the bed. There was a thin, lantern-jawed old fellow
sipping his chocolate before he resigned himself to sleep. Now and
then there would be a faint scream and a muttered apology as some one,
feeling his way to his nest, had fallen over the couch of a sleeper.
Mothers were nursing babies, nurses were singing others to rest; social
spirits were recalling the last strains of recent convivialities; while
others, less genially given, were uttering their "Carambas" in all the
vindictive anger of broken slumber. Now and then a devotional attitude
might be detected, and even some little glimpses caught of some fair
form making her toilet for the night, and throwing back her dishevelled
hair to peer at the passing strangers.

Such were the scenes that even a brief transit presented; a longer
sojourn and a little more light had doubtless discovered still more
singular ones.

We halted at the gate of a large, gloomy-looking building which the
Friar informed me was the "Venta Nazionale," the chief inn of the town;
and by dint of much knocking, and various interlocutions between Fra
Miguel and a black, four stories high, the gates were at length opened.
Faint, hungry, and tired, I had hoped that we should have supped in
company, and thus recompensed me for my share of the successful issue of
the journey; but the Fra, giving his orders hastily, wished me an abrupt
"good night," and led his niece up the narrow stairs, leaving me and my
mare in the gloomy entrance, like things whose services were no longer
needed.

"This may be Texan gratitude, Fra Miguel," said I to myself, "but
certainly you never brought it from your own country." Meanwhile the
negro, after lighting the others upstairs, returned to where I was, and
perhaps not impressed by any high notions of my quality, or too sleepy
to think much about the matter, sat down on a stone bench, and looked
very much as if about to comp