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Chinita the foundling came forward calmly, though her skirt was in tatters, and her draggled scarf scarce covered her shoulders; but there was an air about her as if she had been dressed in imperial robes. “Ah!” she said quite calmly, “it is the smell of the blood that has startled your horse; they say no animal passes here without shying and plunging, since the American was killed!”

Ramirez glanced around him with wild eyes. “Oh, you cannot see him now,” cried the child; “that happened long ago. No, no, there is nothing here that will hurt you. Why do you look at me like that? It is not I—a poor little girl—who could injure you, but men like those,” and she pointed to the columns of soldiers whose bayonets were glistening in the rising sun. Her eye seemed to single out Gonzales, though he was beyond her vision. The thought of Ramirez perchance followed hers, yet he only sat and stared at her, his eyes fixed, his body shrunken and bowed.

“See here,” she said slowly, raising herself on tiptoe, and with eager hand drawing something from beneath her clothing, “I have a charm of jet: Pedro put it on my neck when I was a baby. It will ward off the evil eye. Take it; wear it. An old man gave it to Pedro on his death-bed; he had been a soldier, a highwayman; he had fought many battles, killed many men, yet had never had a wound! Take it!” She took from her neck a tiny bit of jet, hanging from a hempen string, and thrust it into his hand.