Two years more than half a century ago there lived a Creole trader of some wealth in the little town of Araure, in the province of Barinas, upon the outskirts of the Llanos.  Don Jose had a stalwart son, aged about sixteen, whom he had trained to active usefulness amid the monotonous ease of the torrid little municipality.  Young Jose Antonio had received, it is true, only a scanty education, but he could sign his name, could verify a calculation, and had a shrewd, quick head for business.  The doctors-of-law, tolerably numerous even in little Araure, pronounced him born for a jurist, and he was a godsend to the litigious natives of the Captain-Generalcy.  The hide-and-tallow merchants nodded knowingly, as he passed them in the street with a good-humored Adios, and predicted great fortunes for the lad as a future man-of-business.  The Cura thought it a pity that he should prefer the society of the dusky beauties of Araure to the more hallowed enjoyments of preparation for a priestly life.  And all the while quite other destinies were held in store by Fate.  The remissness of a mercantile correspondent of his father altered the current of his life, and mightily influenced, even to the present day, the fortunes of his country.

A sum was owing to Don Jose by a trader of Capudare, and he intrusted his son with the task of collecting the debt.  One fine day, in the spring of 1807, the lad accordingly set out, in high spirits at his important mission, armed with a brace of pistols and a cutlass, and mounted on a trusty mule.  The money was duly collected, but, as young Jose Antonio journeyed home with it, a rumor of his precious charge was spread, and he was beset in a lonely by-path by four highwaymen.  The pistols flashed from Jose’s holsters, and one of the churriones fell the next moment with a bullet in his brain.  Instantly presenting the second pistol, which was not loaded, he advanced upon the remaining three, who fell back in consternation, and fled, panic-stricken, from the boy.  Jose Antonio was left alone with the highwayman’s corpse.  It was no light thing in Venezuela to commit a homicide without testimony of innocence, and young Jose hastened homewards with his treasure, in a state of trepidation far greater than any the living highwaymen could have inspired.  Even in his parents’ dwelling, he dreaded, every moment, the arrival of an order for his arrest, and to appease his groundless anxiety his father shortly suggested that he should take refuge upon the Llanos,—­the Sherwood of Venezuelan Robin Hoods.  The youth was delighted with the idea, and engaged himself as herdsman in the service of Don Manuel Pulido, a wealthy proprietor, whom he served so well that he was very quickly advanced to a position of confidence and command.  In a few months the slayer of the churrion had learned to smile at his recent apprehensions; but the wild life of the hato had already thrown around him its subtle fascination, and the sprightly