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“Oh!” ejaculated Chinita, significantly, and she laughed. “Then it is no use for me to tell you where he is buried. If there was no American, he could not have a grave.”

“Yet you have found it!” cried Chata, in intense excitement, for the story, more or less veracious, that had often been told her of the murder of the American years before, and the return of his ghost from time to time to haunt the spot accursed by his unavenged blood, had taken a strong hold upon her imagination. “Oh, Chinita! did you go, as you said you would, among the graves on the hillside? Did you go?”

“Why, yes, I did go,” answered Chinita, slowly, winding her arms around her knees, as she leaned from her high perch, her brown face almost touching that of the smaller child, who still stood before her. “But I sha’n’t tell you anything more, so you may as well go home. Ah, I think I hear them calling you,” and she straightened herself up as if to listen.

“No! no! no!” cried Chata in an agony of impatience, “I will not go till you tell me. I will know! Oh, Chinita, if I were but like you, and could run about at will, over the fields and up the hills!” The tears rose to her eyes as she spoke,—poor little captive, in her stolen moment of liberty feeling in her soul the iron of bondage to custom or necessity.