“General Robles, peace to his soul, was a short, thick man, with round, staring eyes, fierce and jovial.  Seeing my distress he added: 

“’Come, come, chico.  I promise you his life if he does not resist.  And that is not likely.  We are not going to break up a good soldier if it can be helped.  I tell you what!  I am curious to see your strong man.  Nothing but a general will do for the picaro—­well, he shall have a general to talk to.  Ha! ha!  I shall go myself to the catching, and you are coming with me, of course.’

“And it was done that same night.  Early in the evening the house and the orchard were surrounded quietly.  Later on the General and I left a ball we were attending in town and rode out at an easy gallop.  At some little distance from the house we pulled up.  A mounted orderly held our horses.  A low whistle warned the men watching all along the ravine, and we walked up to the porch softly.  The barricaded house in the moonlight seemed empty.

“The General knocked at the door.  After a time a woman’s voice within asked who was there.  My chief nudged me hard.  I gasped.

“‘It is I, Lieutenant Santierra,’ I stammered out, as if choked.  ’Open the door.’

“It came open slowly.  The girl, holding a thin taper in her hand, seeing another man with me, began to back away before us slowly, shading the light with her hand.  Her impassive white face looked ghostly.  I followed behind General Robles.  Her eyes were fixed on mine.  I made a gesture of helplessness behind my chief’s back, trying at the same time to give a reassuring expression to my face.  None of us three uttered a sound.

“We found ourselves in a room with bare floor and walls.  There was a rough table and a couple of stools in it, nothing else whatever.  An old woman with her grey hair hanging loose wrung her hands when we appeared.  A peal of loud laughter resounded through the empty house, very amazing and weird.  At this the old woman tried to get past us.

“‘Nobody to leave the room,’ said General Robles to me.

“I swung the door to, heard the latch click, and the laughter became faint in our ears.

“Before another word could be spoken in that room I was amazed by hearing the sound of distant thunder.

“I had carried in with me into the house a vivid impression of a beautiful clear moonlight night, without a speck of cloud in the sky.  I could not believe my ears.  Sent early abroad for my education, I was not familiar with the most dreaded natural phenomenon of my native land.  I saw, with inexpressible astonishment, a look of terror in my chief’s eyes.  Suddenly I felt giddy.  The General staggered against me heavily; the girl seemed to reel in the middle of the room, the taper fell out of her hand and the light went out; a shrill cry of ‘Misericordia!’ from the old woman pierced my ears.  In the pitchy darkness I heard the plaster off the walls falling on the floor.  It is a mercy there was no ceiling.  Holding on to the latch of the door, I heard the grinding of the roof-tiles cease above my head.  The shock was over.