both hearts was restored; and now the excitement of
the dance, and the less zealous guardianship of Don Ambrosio, half drunk
with wine, gave confidence to their eyes, and they gazed more boldly and
frequently at one another.

The ring of dancers whirling round the room passed close to where Carlos
sat. It was a waltz. Catalina was waltzing with the beau Echevarria.
At each circle her face was towards Carlos, and then their eyes met. In
these transient but oft-recurring glances the eyes of a Spanish maid
will speak volumes, and Carlos was reading in those of Catalina a
pleasant tale. As she came round the room for the third time, he
noticed something held between her fingers, which rested over the
shoulder of her partner. It was a sprig with leaves of a dark greenish
hue. When passing close to him, the sprig, dexterously detached, fell
upon his knees, while he could just bear, uttered in a soft whisper, the
word--"_Tuya_!"

Carlos caught the sprig, which was a branch of "tuya," or cedar. He
well understood its significance; and after pressing it to his lips, he
passed it through the button-hole of his embroidered "jaqueta." As
Catalina came round again, the glances exchanged between them were those
of mutual and confiding love.

The night wore on--Don Ambrosio at length became sleepy, and carried off
his daughter, escorted by Roblado.

Soon after most of the ricos and fashionables left the saloon, but some
tireless votaries of Terpsichore still lingered until the rosy Aurora
peeped through the "rejas" of the Casa de Cabildo.

CHAPTER TEN.

The "Llano Estacado," or "Staked Plain" of the hunters, is one of the
most singular formations of the Great American Prairie. It is a
table-land, or "steppe," rising above the regions around it to a height
of nearly one thousand feet, and of an oblong or leg-of-mutton form,
trending from north to south.

It is four hundred miles in length, and at its widest part between two
and three hundred. Its superficial area is about equal to the island of
Ireland. Its surface aspect differs considerably from the rest of
prairie-land, nor is it of uniform appearance in every part. Its
northern division consists of an arid steppe, sometimes treeless, for an
extent of fifty miles, and sometimes having a stunted covering of
mezquite (_acacia_), of which there are two distinct species. This
steppe is in several places rent by chasms a thousand feet in depth, and
walled in on