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Rh reach Guanajuato I had still twenty leagues to travel. It occurred to me that Guanajuato was the town to which the Biscayan nobleman had conveyed Donna Luz. Besides the certainty of there meeting Don Tomas, I had the hope of learning the fate of a man in whom I already felt an interest as intense as if he had been an old friend. This double consideration determined me.

"Well," said I to Cecilio, "we must go and wait upon Don Tomas in his own house, which he seems in a great hurry to reach."

The road to Guanajuato winds through a ravine of interminable length called Cañada de Marfil, and it was far on in the afternoon before we reached that city, whose steep streets we traversed rapidly in the direction of the Cerro del Gigante. The road that we followed on leaving the town was cut with ravines and full of ruts. I was not long in regretting that I had entangled myself in such a defile as this, especially as night was coming on, and we were on an unknown road. As we advanced the scenery became wilder and more desolate; the noise made by the runnels of water which bounded over the rocks on either side, and the cawing of troops of crows which hovered overhead, were the only sounds which broke the stillness around.

"Ah! Señor," said Cecilio, approaching me when I had halted for a moment to recall to my recollection the instructions I had received, "this gully seems a real cutthroat place, and I hope nothing worse will be fall us than wandering all night long in this labyrinth of mountains, where the cold cuts into one's marrow."

I was not insensible to the cold which began to prevail in this deep valley, and I threw over my shoulders the manga that the Biscayan had given me in