Lawrence gladly accepted the invitation.
“We make but a brief halt,” said the colonel, “for time presses and distances are great. Our next shall be at the Estancia Algaroba, where we shall spend the night. Your friend Pedro will make arrangements for us. He is with the advance-guard.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Lawrence; then, feeling that he ought to say something more, “I suppose his newly-found daughter is with him?”
“Yes,” replied the colonel, curtly, as he shot a suspicious glance at the youth from under his shaggy brows.
After dining, Lawrence returned to the baggage-mules with an unaccountable depression of spirits upon him, and deeply absorbed with the question whether rear-guards ever overtook advance-guards, and what, if they did, usually became of intervening main bodies. With such puzzling military questions on his mind, the remainder of that day’s journey was not equal to the first part, and even Quashy, the sympathetic, failed to interest him!
The estancia, previously referred to by the colonel, stood on a slight eminence surrounded by the grove of algaroba-trees from which it derived its name. The fruit of this tree forms excellent food for cattle, and Lawrence found himself busily engaged during the first hour after arrival in procuring it for his mules, and otherwise looking after his charge. When this duty was done, feeling no disposition to join his comrades at supper, he sauntered into a garden in rear of the estancia, where he found a rustic seat under an algaroba-tree, and sat down to meditate.
It was a calm, peaceful, moonlight night, with an air, so he felt, of sadness about it which harmonised with his melancholy thoughts. He now believed he saw through Colonel Marchbanks’s plan, and had given up all hope of seeing Manuela again. In these circumstances, being a man of submissive spirit yet powerful will, he set himself resolutely to think of the important object in which he was engaged. Somewhat thus his meditations ran—
“I am no soldier, but I am a man, and I should be less than a man—unworthy to live—if I were not ready to help in the rescue of women and children. Some of the girls, poor things, may be like Manu— that is—. Now, although I hate war, and do not approve of settling disputes by the sword, I feel that self-defence, or the defence of the helpless, justifies war,—ay, to the knife. Of course it does. Was I not thoroughly justified in fighting the robbers when Manu—. Well, then, let me think it out. A thing is not properly thought at all until it is thought out, and found out. Talking of that, how fortunate that Pedro’s little daughter was found out. It is most interesting! I delight to think of her. And she’s so pretty, too—quite beautiful, though, of course, not so beautiful as Man—”
“Bother Manuela!” he exclaimed aloud, starting up.
As he spoke, Manuela herself—the princess of the Incas—stood before him!