favoured him or no, for after meeting him a few
times his very presence, with his calm, supercilious treatment of one
whom he evidently hated from the bottom of his soul, was so galling to
me, that upon his appearance I used to go out and ramble away for hours
together, seeking the wilder wooded parts, and the precipitous spurs of
the mountains, climbing higher and higher, till more than once in some
lonely spot I came upon some trace of a bygone civilisation--ruined
temple, or palace of grand proportions, but now overthrown and crumbling
into dust, with the dense vegetation of the region springing up around,
and in many places so covering it that it was only by accident that I
discovered, in the darkened twilight of the leafy shade, column or
mouldering wall, and then sat down to wonder and try and think out of
the histories of the past who were the people that had left these traces
of a former grandeur, and then over some carven stone light would spring
to my understanding--a light that brought with it a thrill of hope.
Then I would return, as night threatened to hide the track, back to my
uncle's, to be treated coldly, as I thought, by Lilla, while more than
once it seemed that my uncle gazed upon me in a troubled way.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

TOM SPEAKS HIS MIND.

A couple of months soon glided away--a time of mingled misery and
pleasure. At one time I was light-hearted and happy, at another
low-spirited and depressed; for I could not see that there was the
slightest prospect of my hopes ever bearing fruit. I was growing
nervous, too, about Garcia; not that I feared him, but his manner now
betokened that he bore me ill-will of the most intense character.

As for Lilla, the longer I was at the hacienda the more plain it became
that she feared him, shuddering at times when he approached--tokens of
dislike that made his eyes flash, and for which it was very evident that
he blamed me.

But his blame was unjust; he had credited me with having made known the
cowardly part he had played on the river; but though my uncle and aunt
were ignorant of it, the news reached Lilla's ears, the medium being Tom
Bulk.

Tom had settled down very comfortably at the hacienda, taking to smoking
and hanging about the plantation sheds, and doing a little here or there
as it pleased him, but none the less working very hard; and many a time
I had come across him glistening with perspiration as he tugged at some
heavy bag with all an E