get her back there in the canyon; she is-back in the hills!"

Then followed an hour of excitement, friends gathering about the boy, others in search of Peralta, Mariana's father, who was to have an armed force and go to the rescue of his little girl.

But none had taken special note of one who stood by in the crowd, with apparent indifference, his hat pulled low over an ugly line across his temple, and who, disappearing, secured a fresh horse and fled with rapid pace across the plain, up into the canyon.

Events had been moving rapidly the last few days. As soon as Aurelio's mother knew that her son was released, upon the deposit of money under the shrine, she, too, formed her plan. She had not succumbed, as had Mariana's mother, and now, as resolute as ever, she declared her intention to take her son, at once, with her by train down to the seaport, from thence by steamer down the coast, by caravan across the country to Guadalajara and to Mexico City, where lived her brother. Nothing but death, she declared, could prevent her departure from the scene of her anguish. Her husband could dispose of the property and follow.

They were to go at once. "But not till

I see my dear little Mariana," cried the boy. "I promised her, and I want to see her again!"

But the Senor Peralta agreed to write as soon as his daughter could be recovered.

That afternoon, as the vessel bearing Aurelio and his mother was steaming out of the gulf, and as Senor Peralta, with his armed force, was nearing the mouth of the canyon, a little group was winding its way around the foot hills beyond; a lean, old horse, with a woman seated thereon, holding in front of her a little girl, while a man and a hungry-looking yellow dog walked by their side.

CHAPTER IV.

A DESERTED CITY.

Several years had passed. A terrible Scourge was sweeping the west coast of Mexico; "Fiebre Amarillo" men called it (Yellow Fever). Sanitary restrictions were feeble, and the pestilence spread like fire across a dry plain. Many had fled at once, by the one railroad, across to Arizona. But when the trains were cut off, the masses, now thoroughly alarmed, sought escape to the mountains, to the haciendas, anywhere, burying their money and valuables till they might re turn.

Among these latter were the Senor Peralta, his wife and little Frederico. Her strange indifference to the danger had prevented their earlier escape, and this delay had proved fatal to the kind Senor Peralta.

"Take my boy and his mother at once, Juan," he had said to his faithful servant. "Hire a carriage, and take them across the country, up over our northern line, where they may take the train to the City of Mexico. Thou wilt not lack for

nieans. Lift up the bricks under my bed, and there thou wilt find the money and the jewels which thou mayst sell. Hasten, my good Juan!"

Only a few hours of intense suffering and the good Don Fernando was borne away to be laid in the hastily prepare 1 burying place, where lay, side by side, the rich and poor alike.

Juan would not leave his master till he was tenderly placed away. And when he returned to search for the buried treasures, he found the bricks upturned, but nothing there.

He did not know that one standing without, listening under the window, had heard; one with narrow, glittering eyes and a dark mark across his forehead. And he had laughed aloud when he held in his hand gold and pearls, rare pearls, white, green and black, which the divers had drawn from the deep Gulf waters.

"Ah, now," he had exclaimed, "now I am rich! No longer need they call me 'Devil's errand boy,' nor anybody's errand boy! My own master now I am, for rich I am! I, too, may leave this city, and live and travel and be a gentleman!"

Little did it matter that Juan had found no gold, for his well loved mistress had succumbed, and she, too, was carried