“It was made by me, senor.”

“I kept it as a clue to him, Don Altascar,” I said.  “If I could find him—­”

“He is here.”

“Here! and”—­but I could not say “well!” I understood the gravity of the old man’s face, the hushed footfalls, the tomblike repose of the building, in an electric flash of consciousness; I held the clue to the broken riata at last.  Altascar took my hand, and we crossed the corridor to a somber apartment.  A few tall candles were burning in sconces before the window.

In an alcove there was a deep bed with its counterpane, pillows, and sheets heavily edged with lace, in all that splendid luxury which the humblest of these strange people lavish upon this single item of their household.  I stepped beside it and saw George lying, as I had seen him once before, peacefully at rest.  But a greater sacrifice than that he had known was here, and his generous heart was stilled forever.

“He was honest and brave,” said the old man, and turned away.  There was another figure in the room; a heavy shawl drawn over her graceful outline, and her long black hair hiding the hands that buried her downcast face.  I did not seem to notice her, and, retiring presently, left the loving and loved together.

When we were again beside the crackling fire, in the shifting shadows of the great chamber, Altascar told me how he had that morning met the horse of George Tryan swimming on the prairie; how that, farther on, he found him lying, quite cold and dead, with no marks or bruises on his person; that he had probably become exhausted in fording the creek, and that he had as probably reached the mound only to die for want of that help he had so freely given to others; that, as a last act, he had freed his horse.  These incidents were corroborated by many who collected in the great chamber that evening—­women and children—­most of them succored through the devoted energies of him who lay cold and lifeless above.

He was buried in the Indian mound—­the single spot of strange perennial greenness which the poor aborigines had raised above the dusty plain.  A little slab of sandstone with the initials “G.  T.” is his monument, and one of the bearings of the initial corner of the new survey of the “Espiritu Santo Rancho.”

AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN

In 1858 Fiddletown considered her a very pretty woman.  She had a quantity of light chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling complexion, and a certain languid grace which passed easily for gentle-womanliness.  She always dressed becomingly, and in what Fiddletown accepted as the latest fashion.  She had only two blemishes:  one of her velvety eyes, when examined closely, had a slight cast; and her left cheek bore a small scar left by a single drop of vitriol—­happily the only drop of an entire phial—­thrown upon her by one of her own jealous sex, that reached the pretty face it was intended to mar.  But when