questions of Planillas, whose crooked morality made him an object of suspicion. Not finding either him or the mule at the place he had left them, he had followed their traces, and having arrived at the spot where we now were, found poor Florencio lying on the ground almost insensible, and bleeding profusely. He had then learned the truth from the lips of the wounded man. The mule, which Florencio and his companion were dragging to a solitary place, had died, it is true, in the hacienda de platas; but Florencio had never seen the animal till that day, and the cause of his tender solicitude was, that its flanks contained a number of silver ingots which Planillas had stolen and hidden there, so that the clerk of the mines might not discover them. The stratagem had been successful; but when they came to divide the spoil, after having drawn it to a still more solitary spot, a quarrel arose, and the result was, that Planillas got nothing but a couple of stabs from the ready knife of his neighbor, which had placed his life in great danger.
"You can guess the rest," continued Fuentes. "I could not help being sorry for the fellow, and went away, promising to send him assistance. I can't tell how it is, but I completely forgot the poor devil."
Fuentes was right in not boasting of his second impulse. As for this reckless indifference to human life, I had seen too many similar instances in Mexico to be at all astonished at it. I rode sadly back to Guanajuato, still in the company of Fuentes, who did not fail to stop me at the little pent-house in which the hand of the sacrilegious robber was exposed. This memorial of a barbarous justice reminded me that I had observed some imperfections in the miner's story.
"If I understood you aright," I said, "of the three
