Sounding the Signal.
Phelim’s vigil was of short duration. Scarce ten minutes had he been keeping it, when he became warned by the sound of a horse’s hoof, that some one was coming up the creek in the direction of the hut.
His heart commenced hammering against his ribs.
The trees, standing thickly, hindered him from having a view of the approaching horseman; and he could not tell what sort of guest was about to present himself at the jacalé. But the hoofstroke told him there was only one; and this it was that excited his apprehension. He would have been less alarmed to hear the trampling of a troop. Though well assured it could no longer be his master, he had no stomach for a second interview with the cavalier who so closely resembled him—in everything except the head.
His first impulse was to rush across the lawn, and carry out the scheme entrusted to him by Zeb. But the indecision springing from his fears kept him to his place—long enough to show him that they were groundless. The strange horseman had a head.
“Shure an that same he hez,” said Phelim, as the latter rode out from among the trees, and halted on the edge of the opening; “a raal hid, an a purty face in front av it. An’ yit it don’t show so plazed nayther. He luks as if he’d jist buried his grandmother. Sowl! what a quare young chap he is, wid them toiny mowstacks loike the down upon a two days’ goslin’! O Lard! Luk at his little fut! Be Jaysus, he’s a woman!”
While the Irishman was making these observations—partly in thought, partly in muttered speech—the equestrian advanced a pace or two, and again paused.
On a nearer view of his visitor, Phelim saw that he had correctly guessed the sex; though the moustache, the manner of the mount, the hat, and serapé, might for the moment have misled a keener intellect than his of Connemara.
It was a woman. It was Isidora.
It was the first time that Phelim had set eyes on the Mexican maiden—the first that hers had ever rested upon him. They were equally unknown to one another.