incessantly.

Sumichrast wishing, before we set out again, to explain to his pupil how
sugar was made, took him to the mill, situated in a wide rotunda. Here
two upright wooden cylinders, fitting close to one another, revolved on
a pivot, set in action by means of two oxen yoked together, crushing the
canes which an Aztec[C] was introducing between them. The machine
groaned, and seemed almost ready to fall to pieces under the impetus of
the powerful animals, which were urged on both by voice and gesture.
Lucien remarked that the canes were cut in lengths of about a yard, and
bevelled off at the ends, so as to be more readily caught between the
two cylinders. After having been subjected to this heavy pressure, they
came out squeezed almost dry, and the sweet juice, or _sirup_, flowed
down into a large trough hollowed out of the trunk of a tree.

As soon as this receptacle was full of juice, an enormous valve was
opened, and the turbid, muddy-looking liquid flowed along a trench, and
emptied into a brick reservoir. On its way it passed through the meshes
of a coarse bag, and was thus roughly filtered; it was then conveyed
into immense coppers placed over a hot furnace. The fragments of crushed
cane, having been rapidly dried in the sun, were used to feed the fire
which boiled the juice so lately squeezed out of them.

Near the aloe-fibre filtering-bag, in front of which the morsels of cane
and rubbish constantly accumulated, stood a little boy about twelve
years old, whose duty it was to keep the passage clear. Lucien pulled my
coat, to call my attention to the fact that the lad had only one arm.

"How did you lose your left arm, pobricito?" I asked.

"Between the crushers, senor."

"Was it your own fault?"

"Alas! yes. My father looked after the machine, and I helped him to
drive the oxen; and he had forbidden my going near the cylinders. One
day he went away for a few minutes, and I tried to put a piece of cane
between the rollers; but my finger caught, and my arm was drawn in and
crushed."

"It was a terrible punishment for your disobedience," I said.

"More terrible than you think, senor. My father died six months ago, and
I have several little brothers. If I had both my arms, I could earn a
quarter of a piastre a day, and also help my mother."

"How much do they give you for watching this filtering-bag from morning
till night?"

"Only a medio,"[D] he answered.

I looked hard at Lucien, who threw himself