Then, after a moment, she continued:
“I don’t see what made you disturb me when I was so happy. I wish somebody—But I won’t wait to wish. I’ll go straight away and find out what it all means. I will see my brother. I will make them bring him out from wherever he is, for he can’t talk with these people and I can. Oh! how glad I am I learned, even if only a little bit!”
She hastily left him to his lonely foreboding, there upon the roof, which grew unpleasantly warm as the shadows moved from him. Scrambling down into the interior of the house upon which they had been sitting, Carlota wildly demanded of the first person she met to be taken to her brother.
“I must and shall see him. Where is he?”
“Where you will be if you make an uproar. The council is deliberating.”
That the girl would dare force her presence upon the elders of the village did not enter the informant’s mind till she saw Carlota look frantically around and then dart toward the nearest opening in the inner wall. This was not in the direction of the hall of justice, but it led—somewhere! and through it the child ran, crying at the top of her voice:
“Carlos! My Carlos! Where are you?”
Then she was confronted by an aged woman, who caught and almost viciously questioned her:
“Would you rush before the wise men thus—you?”
“Wise? You mean wicked—wicked! Oh, my father, my father! Why did we ever leave Refugio!” and shrieking, she threw herself prone on the floor and buried her face in her arms.