"Are you certain of it, Paredes?"
"Yes, niña, I am."
The young lady immediately placed herself by the majordomo's side, and bending down over the stones, examined them with extreme care and attention. At length she drew herself up with a start of joy.
"My father," she said, with emotion, "the honour of dealing the first stroke belongs to you."
"Very good, my child; where am I to strike?"
"There!" she said, pointing to a rather large gap between two stones.
Don Hernando drove in the pick, and, pressing on it forcibly, detached a stone, which rolled on the grass.
"Very good," said the girl. "Now stop, father, and let these young men work; you can join them presently, should it prove necessary. Come, Ruiz—come tocayo—come, Paredes—to work, my friends! Enlarge this hole, and make it large enough for us to pass through."
The three men set to work ardently, excited by Doña Marianna's words, and soon the stones, leaping from their bed of earth, began to strew the ground around in large numbers. Not one of the three men suspected the nature of the task he was performing, and yet such is the attraction of a secret, that they drove in their picks with extraordinary ardour. Ruiz alone possibly foresaw an important discovery behind the task, but could not have explained what its nature was. The work, in the meanwhile, progressed; the hole became with every moment larger. The stones, which had been apparently thrown upon each other, were not bound by any mortal, and hence, so soon as the first was removed, the others came out with extreme facility. Now and then the labourers stopped to draw breath; but this interruption lasted only a short time, so anxious were they to obtain the solution of the problem. All at once they stopped in discouragement, for an enormous mass of rock resisted their efforts. This rock, which was about six feet square, was exactly under the stones they had previously removed, and as no solution of continuity could be perceived, everything led to the supposition that this rock was really very much larger, and that only a portion of it was laid bare.
"Why are you stopping, brother?" Doña Marianna asked.