throughout her frame.

The two youths, observing this, essay to reassure her--one in filial
duty, the other with affection almost as warm.

Alas! in vain. As the crown of the tall hat worn by her husband, goes
down behind the crest of a distant ridge, Francesca's having sooner
disappeared, her heart sinks at the same time; and, making a sign of the
cross, she exclaims in desponding accents:--

"_Madre de Dios_! We may ne'er see them more!"

CHAPTER FIVE.

A DESERTED VILLAGE.

Riding at a gentle amble, so that his daughter on her small palfrey may
easily keep up with him, Halberger in due time arrives at the Indian
village; to his surprise seeing it is no more a village, or only a
deserted one! The toldos of bamboo and palm thatch are still standing,
but untenanted--every one of them!

Dismounting, he steps inside them, one after the other, but finds each
and all unoccupied--neither man, woman, nor child within; nor without,
either in the alleys between, or on the large open space around which
the frail tenements are set, that has served as a loitering-place for
the older members of the tribe, and a play-ground for the younger.

The grand council room, called _malocca_, he also enters with like
result; no one is inside it--not a soul to be seen anywhere, either in
the streets of the village or on the plain stretching around!

He is alarmed as much as surprised; indeed more, since he has been
anticipating something amiss. But by degrees, as he continues to make
an examination of the place, his apprehensions became calmed down, these
having been for the fate of the Indians themselves. His first thought
he had entertained while conjecturing the cause of their long absence
from the _estancia_, was that some hostile tribe had attacked them,
massacred the men, and carried captive the women and children. Such
tragical occurrences are far from uncommon among the red aborigines of
America, Southern or Northern. Soon, however, his fears on this score
are set at rest. Moving around, he detects no traces of a struggle,
neither dead bodies nor blood. If there had been a fight the corpses of
the fallen would surely still be there, strewing the plain; and not a
_toldo_ would be standing or seen--instead, only their ashes.

As it is, he finds the houses all stripped of their furniture and
domestic utensils; these evidently borne off not as by marauders, but
taken away in a systematic manner, as when a regular mo