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But license rather than liberty seemed to animate those wild spirits who, invigorated after a long day’s march by the sight of a halting place, urged their steeds with wild shouts and blows with the flat side of their sabres, as well as with applications from their clanking spurs, across the plain, where scattered at intervals might be seen the laggards of the party, chiefly women, on mule or donkey back, with their cooking implements hanging from the panniers upon which they squatted in security and comfort, nursing their babies or quieting the more fractious older children, as the animals they rode paced quietly on or broke into a jog-trot at their own wills.

It was a cause of great excitement and delight to the children in the balcony to see the soldiers—most of them still arrayed in their ranchero dress of buff leather, but some of them resplendent in blue-and-red cloth, with stripes of gilt upon their arms and caps—stop at the huts along the principal street or lane of the village, and laughingly take possession, bidding Trinita and Francisca and Florencia, and the rest of them, to go or stay as it pleased them. Some of the women were frightened and began to cry and bewail, but others found acquaintances among the new arrivals; and there was much laughing and talking, in the midst of which two personages who appeared to be the leaders of the party, and who were followed by a dozen or more companions and servants, rode up to the hacienda gates, and one, scarcely pausing for an answer from the astonished Pedro whom he saluted by name, rode into the courtyard, whither he was followed by the gate-keeper, who with stoical calm yet evident amazement saluted him as Don Vicente; and holding his stirrup as he dismounted added in a low voice,—