e purpose of passing your thesis that you have come to
Oajaca?"

"No," replied Lantejas, "my errand into this country is altogether
different. I am here in obedience to the commands of my father, whose
brother is the proprietor of the rich estate of San Salvador. I am to
remind my uncle that he is a widower--rich--and without children; and
that he has half-a-dozen nephews to provide for. That is my business at
San Salvador. What can I do? My honoured father is more attached to
the good things of this life than is perhaps right; and I have been
obliged to make this journey of two hundred leagues, for the purpose of
sounding our relative's disposition in regard to us."

"And ascertaining the value of his property as well?"

"Oh! as to that, we know exactly how much it is worth; though none of us
has ever been on the estate."

This answer of the young student did more honour to his heart than to
his discretion.

"Well," continued he, after a pause, "I may safely say, that never did
nephew present himself before an uncle in a more famished condition than
I shall do. Thanks to the inexplicable desertion of all the houses and
villages through which I have passed--and the care which their owners
have taken to carry with them even the leanest chicken--there is not a
jackal in the country hungrier than I at this minute."

The dragoon was in pretty much the same case. For two days he had been
travelling without seeing a soul, and though his horse had picked up a
little forage along the road, he had been unable to obtain food for
himself--other than such wild fruits and berries as he could gather by
the way.

The sympathy for a like suffering at once dissipated any ill-blood which
the difference in their political sentiments might have stirred up; and
harmony was restored between them.

The captain in his turn informed his new _compagnon du voyage_, that,
since the imprisonment of the Viceroy, Iturrigaray, his own father, a
Spanish gentleman, had retired to his estate of Del Valle, where he was
now proceeding to join him. He was not acquainted with this estate,
having never been upon it since he was a mere child; but he knew that it
was not far from the hacienda of Las Palmas, already mentioned. Less
communicative than Don Cornelio, he did not inform the student of
another motive for his journey, though there was one that interested him
far more than revisiting the scenes of his childhood.

As the travellers ro