"Are you ill? What is the matter? Is it true that the bombs have destroyed your house?"
It was even so, and the young girl's whole aspect showed her great distress. Her clothing was that which we saw on her the night before. Her hair was loosened, and we could see burns upon her poor bruised arms.
"Yes," she said, at last, in a stifled voice. "Our house is gone. We have nothing. We have lost everything. This morning, soon after you had gone, a bomb destroyed the house, then two others fell."
"And your father?"
"My father is there, and will not abandon the ruins of the house. I have been looking for you all day, for you to help us. I have been under fire. I have been in all the streets of the suburb. I have entered several houses. I was afraid that you were dead."
Augustine seated himself in a gateway, and, sheltering Mariquilla with his military cloak, he held her in his arms as one holds a child. Freed thus from her terror, she could talk; and she told us that she had not been able to save a single thing. They had scarcely had time to get out of the house. The unhappy girl was trembling with cold, and, putting my cloak over Augustine's, we tried to take her to the house where we were on duty.
"No," she said, "I must go back to my father. He is wild and desperate, and is uttering blasphemies against God and the saints. I have not been able to get him away from that which was our house. We are in need of food. The neighbors were not willing to give us anything. If you are not willing to take me there, I will go alone."
"No, Mariquilla, no. You shall not go there," said Montoria. "We will put you in one of these houses where at least for to-night you will be safe. In the mean time Gabriel shall go in search of your father, and take him something to eat, and by persuasion or by force will get him away from there."
Mariquilla insisted upon returning to the Calle de Anton Trillo. But as she scarcely had strength to move, we took her in our arms to a house in the Calle de los Clavos, where Manuela Sancho was.