lders of painted
maskers; and there were Pilate and the Centurion, and the Saviour--a
spectacle absurd and unnatural; and yet a spectacle that may be
witnessed every week in a Mexican village, and which, with but slight
variation, has been exhibited every week for three centuries!

I had no eyes for this disgusting fanfarronade of a degrading
superstition. Sick of the sight, wearied with the sounds, I had given
orders for my horse to be saddled, intending to ride forth and seek
repose for my spirit amid the silent glades of the chapparal.

While waiting for my steed, an object came under my eyes that quickened
the beatings of my pulse: my gaze had been long turned in one
direction--upon the hacienda of Don Ramon de Vargas.

Just then, I saw emerging from its gate, and passing rapidly down the
hill, a horse with a rider upon his back.

The snow-white colour of this horse, and the scarlet manga of the
rider--both contrasting with the green of the surrounding landscape--
could not escape observation even at that distance, and my eyes at once
caught the bright object.

I hesitated not to form my conclusion. It was the white steed I saw;
and the rider--I remembered the manga as when first my eyes rested upon
that fair form--the rider was Isolina.

She was passing down the slope that stretched from the hacienda to the
river, and the minute after, the thick foliage of the platanus trees
shrouded the shining meteor from my sight.

I noticed that she halted a moment on the edge of the woods, and fancied
that she gazed earnestly towards the village; but the road she had taken
led almost in the opposite direction.

I chafed with impatience for my horse. My resolve, made on the impulse
of the moment, was to follow the white steed and his scarlet-clad rider.

Once in the saddle I hurried out of the piazza, passed the ranchos of
yucca, and reaching the open country, pressed my horse into a gallop.

My road lay up the river, through a heavily timbered bottom of gum and
cotton-woods. These were thickly beset with the curious _tillandsia_,
whose silvery festoons, stretching from branch to branch, shrouded the
sun, causing amongst the tree-trunks the obscurity of twilight.

In the midst of one of these shadowy aisles, I met or passed some one: I
saw that it was a Mexican boy; but the sombre light, and the rapidity
with which I was riding, prevented me from noting anything more. The
lad shouted after me, uttering some wor