A league or less from the village of Las Parras there stood—and perhaps still stands—a small chapel, built, no one knows in fulfilment of what pious vow, at the entrance to a mountain pass of the roughest and most dangerous sort alike from the forces of Nature and of humanity. Likely enough some rich hidalgo, escaping from brigands, raised here the humble pile, and vowed that the lamp should ever burn before the Virgin and her blessed Child. But through the long years of war, as a pious ranchera had said in holy horror, the blessed Babe had remained in darkness. But some time after midnight, one rainy night, a sudden flash of flame lighted up not only the dingy altar but the whole of the small mouldy interior of the chapel, and a scene was revealed which a passing monk might have viewed with reverence, so nearly must it have copied one that may have been common enough when Joseph and Mary journeyed to Jerusalem, eighteen hundred years and more ago.
This thought indeed entered the mind of a man who riding through the drizzling rain caught a glimpse of the unusual light through the unguarded doorway, and reining his horse gazed curiously in. At first the place seemed to him full of women and jaded beasts; then he saw there were but four of each, and that one of the human creatures was a man,—a priest. The women,—good heavens! they were the Señora Doña Isabel Garcia, and the girl whom he had once seen under circumstances almost as extraordinary,—she whom he knew as the daughter of Ramirez and the foster-child of Don Rafael. Of the other woman he scarcely thought, yet he instinctively guessed she was Doña Carmen. Ashley Ward looked round in bewilderment. Only that day some definite account of what had occurred at Tres Hermanos had reached him, told by a man who had been with the administrador and his mother in their vain endeavors to trace the girl who had been so boldly spirited away. The search had been long delayed because of the illness of Doña Feliz; but once begun, it had been prosecuted with untiring zeal. Not a village, scarce a hut throughout that region had been unvisited, yet all in vain.
Ashley had heard the tale with deepest sympathy. Oh inconceivable obtuseness! that it had not once occurred to him or to Gonzales that the girl of whom they had heard as sojourning with Doña Carmen, and whom he had believed to be Chinita, might prove to be her vanished playmate,—simply because the remembrance of the house of Doña Carmen had slipped from their minds when their supposed knowledge of the movements of Chinita made Doña Carmen’s young guest no longer an object of interest to them, simply because the means adopted by Ramirez for the security of Chata would never have suggested themselves to minds less daring, less original than his own. Ashley Ward turned from the doorway dazed. The presence of these personages in such a place, at such a time, seemed unreal, bewildering, ominous.
Upon the heavy sand the horse that Ashley rode had made so little noise that it had not roused the miserable travellers as they cowered wet and shivering around the sputtering fire, upon which the priest with unhesitating hands threw some dry portion of a wooden railing and the broad cover of a sacred book of music. Vain sacrifice! for being of parchment it but curled and blackened, yet would not burn any more than would the bare stone floor upon which the welcome embers lay.
Turning back a few paces Ward encountered the carriage he had accompanied thither. With bowed heads, endeavoring thus to shelter their faces from the mist, General Gonzales and the servant Pedro rode, one on either side of the heavy travelling carriage. Just as Ward appeared they caught sight of the light. The coachman and his helper, half dead as they were from want of sleep, saw it too, and all the mules were stopped as though transfixed. The men began to mumble prayers, crossing themselves with unction. Gonzales, following his habit of caution as well as the motion of Ward, rode softly forward to reconnoitre.
Before the occupants of the carriage had time to question the meaning of the stoppage, Gonzales had returned. His face was white with excitement as he dismounted and opened the door of the vehicle.
“Señorita,” he said in a voice that shook from suppressed emotion, “a wonderful thing has happened!”
Herlinda leaned eagerly forward. She caught the gleam of the light and the grim outline of the chapel against the leaden sky. “Is my child—Leon, my uncle—here?” she gasped.
“No, no! that would not be so strange; we may perhaps at any moment encounter them. But your mother, your sister,—they are in yonder church, drenched, wretched; travellers seemingly more anxious, more eager than ourselves. From a word I heard, they too seek—your child.”
Gonzales spoke the last two words with evident difficulty and repugnance. Herlinda did not notice that. She scarce had heard more than the words, “Your mother, your sister.” In trembling haste she descended from the carriage. Instinctively she clasped the arm of Ashley Ward to support her through the inequalities of the roadway; and followed by Gonzales and Pedro, who had dismounted, she sped with surprising fleetness to the open door of the chapel.