nd for an instant
or two she seemed irresolute. "My mind is sometimes so shaken by
suffering," said she, "that I scarcely dare to trust its guidance; and
even now I feel as if the confidence I am about to place in an utter
stranger, in an--"

"Outcast, you would say," said I, finishing what she faltered at.
"Do not fear, then, one humbled as I have been can take offence at an
epithet."

"Nor is it one such as I am who have the right to confer it," said she,
wiping the heavy drops from her eyes. "Good-bye forever!--since, if you
keep your pledge, we are never to meet again." She gave me her hand,
which I kissed twice, and then, turning away, she passed into the house;
and before I even knew that she was gone, I was standing alone in the
garden, wondering if what had just occurred could be real.

If my journey was not without incident and adventure, neither were they
of a character which it is necessary I should inflict upon my reader,
who doubtless ere this has felt all the wearisome monotony of prairie
life, by reflection. Enough that I say, after an interesting mistake
of the "trail" which led me above a hundred miles astray! I crossed
the Conchos River within a week, and reached Chihuahua, a city of
considerable size, and far more pretensions than any I had yet seen in
the "Far West."

Built on the narrow gorge of two abrupt mountains, the little town
consists of one great straggling street, which occupies each side of a
torrent that descends in a great tumbling mass of foam and spray along
its rocky course. It was the time of the monthly market, or fair, when
I arrived, and the streets were crowded with peasants and muleteers in
every imaginable costume. The houses were mostly built with projecting
balconies, from which gay-colored carpets and bright draperies hung
down, while female figures sat lounging and smoking their cigarettes
above. The aspect of the place was at once picturesque and novel. Great
wooden wagons of melons and cucumbers, nuts, casks of olive-oil and
wine; bales of bright scarlet cloth, in the dye of which they excel;
pottery ware; droves of mustangs, fresh caught and capering in all their
native wildness; flocks of white goats from the Cerzo Gorde, whose wool
is almost as fine as the Llama's; piles of firearms from Birmingham and
Liege, around which groups of admiring Indians were always gathered;
parroquets and scarlet jays, in cages; richly ornamented housings for
mule teams; brass-mounted