he long day crept monotonously away, and she welcomed the night which
shut out the dreary prospect. But it brought no cessation of the
harassing wind without, nor surcease of the nervous irritation its
perpetual and even activity wrought upon her. It haunted her pillow
even in her exhausted sleep, and seemed to impatiently beckon her to
rise and follow it. It brought her feverish dreams of her husband,
footsore and weary, staggering forward under its pitiless lash and
clamorous outcry; she would have gone to his assistance, but when she
reached his side and held out her arms to him it hurried her past with
merciless power, and, bearing her away, left him hopelessly behind. It
was broad day when she awoke. The usual night showers of the waning
rainy season had left no trace in sky or meadow; the fervid morning sun
had already dried the _patio_; only the restless, harrying wind
remained.

Mrs. Tucker arose with a resolve. She had learned from Concha on the
previous evening that a part of the shanty was used as a _tienda_ or
shop for the laborers and _rancheros_. Under the necessity of
purchasing some articles, she would go there and for a moment mingle
with those people, who would not recognize her. Even if they did, her
instinct told her it would be less to be feared than the hopeless
uncertainty of another day. As she left the house the wind seemed to
seize her as in her dream, and hurry her along with it, until in a few
moments the walls of the low _casa_ sank into the earth again and she
was alone, but for the breeze on the solitary plain. The level distance
glittered in the sharp light, a few crows with slant wings dipped and
ran down the wind before her, and a passing gleam on the marsh was
explained by the far-off cry of a curlew.

She had walked for an hour, upheld by the stimulus of light and morning
air, when the cluster of scrub oaks, which was her destination, opened
enough to show two rambling sheds, before one of which was a wooden
platform containing a few barrels and bones. As she approached nearer,
she could see that one or two horses were tethered under the trees,
that their riders were lounging by a horse-trough, and that over an
open door the word _Tienda_ was rudely painted on a board, and as
rudely illustrated by the wares displayed at door and window.
Accustomed as she was to the poverty of frontier architecture, even the
crumbling walls of the old _hacienda_ she had just left seemed
picturesque t