y lips but I refrained from putting it, in hopes that Wheatley
might have something more to tell me--something of more interest than
aught he had yet communicated. He remained provokingly silent.

With the design of drawing him out, I assumed a careless air, and
inquired--

"Have we had no visitors at the post? Any one from the camp?"

"Not a soul," replied he, and again relapsed into meditative silence.

"No visitors whatever? Has no one inquired for _me_?" I asked,
determined to come boldly to the point.

"No," was the discouraging reply.--"Oh, stay: oh, ah--yes, indeed!" he
added, correcting himself, while I could perceive that he spoke in a
peculiar tone. "Yes, you _were_ inquired for."

"By whom?" asked I, in a careless drawl.

"Well, that I can't tell," answered the lieutenant in an evident tone of
badinage; "but there appears to be _somebody_ mighty uneasy about you.
A slip of a Mexican boy has been backward and forward something less
than a million of times. It's plain somebody sends the boy; but he's a
close little shaver that same--he won't tell either who sends him, or
what's his business: he only inquires if you have returned, and looks
dead down in the mouth when he's told no. I have noticed that he comes
and goes on the _road that leads to the hacienda_."

The last words were spoken with a distinct emphasis. "We might have
arrested the little fallow as a spy," continued Wheatley, in a tone of
quiet irony, "but we fancied he might have been sent by some friend of
yours."

The speaker concluded with another marked emphasis, and under the
moonlight I could see a smile playing across his features. More than
once I had "chaffed" my lieutenant about Conchita; he was having his
revenge.

I was not in a mood to take offence; my companion could have taken any
liberty with me at that moment--his communication had fallen like sweet
music upon my ears; and I rode forward with the proud consciousness that
I was not forgotten. Isolina was true.

Soon after, my eyes rested upon a shining object; it was the gilded vane
of the little capilla, and beneath glistened the white vails of the
hacienda, bathed in the milky light of the moon. My heart beat with
strange emotions as I gazed upon the well-known mansion, and thought of
the lovely jewel which that bright casket contained.

Was she asleep? Did she dream? Of what--of whom, was she dreaming?

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR.

DUTCH LIGE IN A DIFFICULT