remains, now
a dry and shapeless mass, are rested for a moment upon the head of the
destroyer, and then jerked far outside the pit!

The ant-lion now dresses his trap, and, again burying himself in the
sand, awaits another victim.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE TATOU-POYOU AND THE DEER CARCASS.

Dona Isidora and Leona had watched all the manoeuvres of the ant-lion
with great interest, and Leona, after the bite she had had, was not in
any mood to sympathise with the ants. Indeed, she felt rather grateful
to the ant-lion, ugly as he was, for killing them.

Presently Leon returned from the woods, and was shown the trap in full
operation; but Leon, upon this day, was full of adventures that had
occurred upon the hills to himself, Guapo, and Don Pablo. In fact, he
had hastened home before the others to tell his mamma of the odd
incidents to which he had been a witness.

That morning they had discovered a new _mancha_ of cinchona trees. When
proceeding towards them they came upon the dead carcass of a deer. It
was a large species, the _Cervus antisensis_, but, as it had evidently
been dead several days, it was swollen out to twice its original size,
as is always the case with carcasses of animals left exposed in a warm
climate. It was odd that some preying animals had not eaten it up. A
clump of tall trees, that shaded it, had, no doubt, concealed it from
the sharp sight of the vultures, and these birds, contrary to what has
so often been alleged, can find no dead body by the smell. Neither ants
nor animals that prey upon carrion had chanced to come that way, and
there lay the deer intact.

So thought Don Pablo and Leon. Guapo, however, was of a different
opinion, and, going up to the body, he struck it a blow with his axe. To
the surprise of the others, instead of the dead sound which they
expected to hear, a dry crash followed the blow, and a dark hole
appeared where a piece of thin shell-like substance had fallen off.
Another blow from Guapo's axe, and the whole side went in. Not a bit of
carcass was there; there were bones--clean bones--and dry hard skin, but
no flesh, not an atom of flesh!

"Tatou-poyou!" quietly remarked Guapo.

"What!" said Don Pablo, "an armadillo, you think?" recognising, in
Guapo's words, the Indian name for one of the large species of
armadillos.

"Yes," replied Guapo. "All eaten by the tatou-poyou. See! there's his
hole."

Don Pablo and Leon bent over the sham carcass, and, sure eno