It was but little likely that our small but wealthy colony would escape, for the fact that we were now possessed of the long-buried treasure—many thousands of pounds in value—must have spread like wild-fire.
One morning Moncrieff and I started early, and rode to a distant estancia, which we were told had been attacked and utterly destroyed, not a creature being left alive about the place with the exception of the cattle and horses, which the Indians had captured. We had known this family. They had often attended Moncrieff's happy little evening parties, and the children had played in our garden and rowed with us in the gondola.
Heaven forbid I should attempt to draw a graphic picture of all we saw! Let it be sufficient to say that the rumours which had reached us were all too true, and that Moncrieff and I saw sights which will haunt us both until our dying day.
The silence all round the estancia when we rode up was eloquent, terribly eloquent. The buildings were blackened ruins, and it was painful to notice the half-scorched trailing flowers, many still in bloom, clinging around the wrecked and charred verandah. But everywhere about, in the out-buildings, on the lawn, in the garden itself, were the remains of the poor creatures who had suffered.
| 'Alas! for love of this were all, And none beyond, O earth!' |
Moncrieff spoke but little all the way back. While standing near the verandah I had seen him move his 250 hand to his eyes and impatiently brush away a tear, but after that his face became firm and set, and for many a day after this I never saw him smile.
At this period of our strange family story I lay down my pen and lean wearily back in my chair. It is not that I am tired of writing. Oh, no! Evening after evening for many and many a long week I have repaired up here to my turret chamber—my beautiful study in our Castle of Coila—and with my faithful hound by my feet I have bent over my sheets and transcribed as faithfully as I could events as I remember them. But it is the very multiplicity of these events as I near the end of my story that causes me to pause and think.
Ah! here comes aunt, gliding into my room, pausing for a moment, curtain in hand, half apologetically, as she did on that evening described in our first chapter.
'No, auntie, you do not disturb me. Far from it. I was longing for your company.'