“The engineer Mequinez,” replied the lad in a thread of a voice.
“The Mequinez family is not in Tucuman,” replied the innkeeper.
A cry of desperate pain, like that of one who has been stabbed, formed an echo to these words.
The innkeeper and the women rose, and some neighbors ran up.
“What’s the matter? what ails you, my boy?” said the innkeeper, drawing him into the shop and making him sit down. “The deuce! there’s no reason for despairing! The Mequinez family is not here, but at a little distance off, a few hours from Tucuman.”
“Where? where?” shrieked Marco, springing up like one restored to life.
“Fifteen miles from here,” continued the man, “on the river, at Saladillo, in a place where a big sugar factory is being built, and a cluster of houses; Signor Mequinez’s house is there; every one knows it: you can reach it in a few hours.”
“I was there a month ago,” said a youth, who had hastened up at the cry.
Marco stared at him with wide-open eyes, and asked him hastily, turning pale as he did so, “Did you see the servant of Signor Mequinez—the Italian?”
“The Genoese? Yes; I saw her.”