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Five Mays had come and gone since she had stood under the fateful tree, and given the jet amulet to the cavalier who had so roused and fascinated her imagination; but whatever may have been its effect upon its new possessor, its loss had certainly wrought no ill upon Chinita. Though not yet fourteen years of age, she was fast attaining the development of womanhood, and her mind as well as person showed a rare precocity even in that land where the change from childhood to womanhood seems almost instantaneous. But there was no coyness, as there was no assumption of womanly ways in this tall, straight young creature, whose only toil was to carry the water-jar from the fountain to Florencia’s hut, perhaps twice in the day,—and who did it sometimes laughingly, sometimes grudgingly as the humor seized her, but always spilling half the burden with which she left the fountain before she lifted it from her shoulder and set it in the hollow worn in the mud floor of the hut, escaping with a laugh from Florencia’s scolding, and hurrying out to her old pursuits, now grown more various, more daring, more perplexing, more vexatious to all with whom she came in contact.