uence, the shadow
coming over the plain before his face, which prompted him to turn
round--recalling the necessity of caution as to their course.

"_Santos Dios_!" he cries out, his own brow becoming shadowed as the
sky; "our luck has left us, and--"

"And what?" asks Cypriano, seeing that the gaucho hesitates, as if
reluctant to say why fortune has so suddenly forsaken them. "There's a
cloud come over the sun; has that anything to do with it?"

"Everything, senorito. If that cloud don't pass off again, we're as
good as lost. And," he adds, with eyes still turned to the east, his
glance showing him to feel the gravest apprehension, "I am pretty sure
it won't pass off--for the rest of this day at all events. _Mira_!
It's moving along the horizon--still rising up and spreading out!"

The others also perceive this, they too, having halted, and faced to
eastward.

"_Santissima_!" continues the gaucho in the same serious tone, "_we're
lost as it is now_!"

"But how lost?" inquires Ludwig, who, with his more limited experience
of pampas life, is puzzled to understand what the gaucho means. "In
what way?"

"Just because there's _no may_. That's the very thing we've lost,
senorito. Look around! Now, can you tell east from west, or north from
south? No, not a single point of the compass. If we only knew one,
that would be enough. But we don't, and, therefore, as I've said, we're
lost--dead, downright lost; and, for anything beyond this, we'll have to
go a groping. At a crawl, too, like three blind cats."

"Nothing of the sort!" breaks in Cypriano, who, a little apart from the
other two, has been for the last few seconds to all appearance holding
communion with himself. "Nothing of the sort," he repeats riding
towards them with a cheerful expression. "We'll neither need to go
groping, Gaspar, nor yet at a crawl. Possibly, we may have to slacken
the pace a bit; but that's all."

Both Ludwig and the gaucho, but especially the latter, sit regarding him
with puzzled looks. For what can he mean? Certainly something which
promises to release them from their dilemma, as can be told by his
smiling countenance and confident bearing. In fine, he is asked to
explain himself, and answering, says:--

"Look back along our trail. Don't you see that it runs straight?"

"We do," replies Gaspar, speaking for both. "In a dead right line,
thank the sun for that; and I only wish we could have had it to direct
us a li