e, an' nebber mind me. I's on'y a
nigger."

Colonel Marchbanks could not decide whether to laugh or storm. Manuela
decided the question for him by inviting the negro to enter, which he
did with humble urbanity.

"Shake hands with him, father. He's only a nigger, as he says, but he's
one of the very best and bravest and most faithful niggers that _I_ ever
had to do with."

"You's bery good, Miss--a'most as good as Sooz'n."

"Oh, well, have it all your own way," cried the colonel, becoming
reckless, and shaking the negro's hand heartily; "I surrender. Lawrence
will dine with us this evening, Manuela, so you'd better see to having
covers laid for three--or, perhaps, for four. It may be that Senhor
Quashy will honour us with--"

"T'ankee, kurnel, you's bery kind, but I's got a prebious engagement."

"A previous engagement, eh?" repeated the colonel, much tickled with the
excuse.

"Yes, kurnel; got to 'tend upon Massa Lawrence; but if you'll allow me
to stan' behind his chair an' _wait_, I'll be much pleased to listen to
all you says, an' put in a word now an' den if you chooses."

And so, good reader, all things came about as the little princess of the
Incas had arranged, long before, in her own self-willed little mind.
Shall we trouble you with the details? Certainly not. That would be
almost an insult to your understanding.

But we will trouble you to mount one of the fleetest steeds of the
Pampas and fly with us over the mighty plains into the wildest regions
of the Andes.

Though wild, we need not tell you that it is a lovely region, for you
have been there already. It is the Mariquita Valley. No longer a
silent wilderness, however, as when we saw it last, for, not very long
after the events which we have just described, Lawrence Armstrong and
his blooming bride, accompanied by the white-haired colonel and the
irrepressible Quashy, and another band of miners and selected emigrants,
entered that valley in a sort of triumphal procession, and were met and
escorted to the head of it by another triumphal procession, which was
under the command of Conrad of the Mountains, whose pretty daughter was
the first to welcome Manuela to her new home.

But now dismount. Put on these wings and soar with us to the brow of
yonder cliff, from which we can have a grand bird's-eye view of the vale
almost from its entrance to the point where it is lost and absorbed in
the majestic recesses of the higher Andes.

See