t had taken place around him--dazzled,
blinded, by the golden rays, which reflected the sun's light over the
surface of the valley--had heard and seen nothing.

With fingers doubled up, he was busied rummaging amongst the sand with
the eagerness of a famished jackal disinterring a corpse.

"Master Cuchillo! a word, if you please," cried Pepe, drawing aside the
branches of the cotton shrubs; "Master Cuchillo!"

But Cuchillo did not hear.

It was only when he had been called three times that he turned around,
and discovered his excited countenance to the carabinier--after having,
by a spontaneous movement of suspicion, thrown a corner of his mantle
over the gold he had collected.

"Master Cuchillo," resumed Pepe, "I heard you a little while ago give
utterance to a philosophical maxim, which gave me the highest opinion of
your character."

"Come!" said Cuchillo to himself, wiping the sweat from his forehead,
"here is someone else who requires my services. These gentry are
becoming imprudent, but, por Dios! they pay handsomely."

Then aloud:

"A philosophical maxim?" said he, throwing away disdainfully, a handful
of sand, the contents of which would elsewhere have rejoiced a
gold-seeker. "What is it? I utter many, and of the best kind;
philosophy is my strong point."

Pepe, on one side of the hedge, resting upon his rifle, in a superb
attitude of nonchalance, and the most imperturbable _sangfroid_, and
Cuchillo, on the other side, with his head stretched across the green
inclosure of the little valley, looked very much like two country
neighbours, for the moment chatting familiarly together.

No one, on seeing them thus, would have suspected the terrible
catastrophe which was to follow this pacific intercourse. The
countenance of the ex-carabinier, only exhibited a gracious smile.

"You spoke truth," replied Pepe. "What signifies human destiny; for
twenty years past you say you have owed your life to the absence of a
tree?"

"It is true," affirmed Cuchillo, in an absent tone, "for a long time I
preferred shrubs, but lately I have become reconciled to large trees."

"Indeed!"

"And yet it is still one of my favourite maxims, that a wise man must
pass over many little inconveniences."

"True. And now I think of it," added Pepe, carelessly, "there are on
the summit of yonder steep hill, two magnificent pine trees which
project over the abyss, and which, twenty years ago, might have caused
you very ser