The major had kept his word
with me, and I bestrode the black--a splendid thoroughbred Arab.

It was a clear moonlight, and as we rode along we could not help
noticing many changes.

War had left its black mark upon the objects around. The ranchos by the
road were tenantless--many of them wrecked, not a few of them entirely
gone; where they had stood, a ray of black ashes marking the outline of
their slight walls. Some were represented by a heap of half-burned
rubbish still smoking and smouldering.

Various pieces of household furniture lay along the path torn or
broken--articles of little value, strewed by the wanton hand of the
ruthless robber. Here a petate, or a palm hat--there a broken olla; a
stringless bandolon, the fragments of a guitar crushed under the angry
heel, or some flimsy articles of female dress cuffed into the dust;
leaves of torn books--_misas_, or lives of the _Santisima Maria_--the
labours of some zealous padre; old paintings of the saints, Guadalupe,
Remedios, and Dolores--of the Nino of Guatepec--rudely torn from the
walls and perforated by the sacrilegious bayonet, flung into the road,
kicked from foot to foot--the dishonoured _penates_ of a conquered
people.

A painful presentiment began to harass me. Wild stories had lately
circulated through the army--stories of the misconduct of straggling
parties of our soldiers in the back-country. These had stolen from
camp, or gone out under the pretext of "beef-hunting."

Hitherto I had felt no apprehension, not believing that any small party
would carry their foraging to so distant a point as the house of our
friends. I knew that any detachment, commanded by an officer, would act
in a proper manner; and, indeed, any respectable body of American
soldiers, without an officer. But in all armies, in war-time, there are
robbers, who have thrown themselves into the ranks for no other purpose
than to take advantage of the licence of a stolen foray.

We were within less than a league of Don Cosme's rancho, and still the
evidence of ruin and plunder continued--the evidence, too, of a
retaliatory vengeance; for on entering a glade, the mutilated body of a
soldier lay across the path. He was upon his back, with open eyes
glaring upon the moon. His tongue and heart were cut out, and his left
arm had been struck off at the elbow-joint. Not ten steps beyond this
we passed another one, similarly disfigured. We were now on the neutral
ground.

As