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184 the mules' hoofs, and the cracking of whips, were mingled with the hoarser sound of the falling water that moved the machinery. I had stopped my horse to gaze on this animated scene, but my attention was soon attracted elsewhere. A few paces distant, but half hidden from us by a hollow in the road, I espied two men dragging along with ropes the carcass of a mule. Having arrived at a place where Desiderio and I could alone see them, one of them stooped over the dead mule, and seemed to examine it curiously, casting at the same time a suspicious glance around. The moment he caught sight of us, he flopped down on the carcass that he had been dragging a minute before, while his companion immediately disappeared in a dense thicket of low trees and brushwood.

"Well, I thought I was right," said Fuentes. "It is my friend Planillas; but what the devil is he doing there?"

At the name of Planillas I shuddered involuntarily, and, preceded by Fuentes, made my way directly to the place where the man was seated on the mule. I hoped to obtain some information from the friend of Don Tomas Verduzco as to the part the bravo had played in the murder of my friend Don Jaime. Planillas, his elbows on his knees, and his head on his hands, appeared overwhelmed by violent grief. The noise of our approach drew him at last from his abstraction, and he looked up at us, but with an expression of uneasiness rather than of sorrow.

"Ah! Señores," cried he, "in me you behold the most miserable man in all New Spain."

"You are doubtless thinking," I replied, "of the young cavalier whom Don Tomas assassinated two days ago, and whose blood is on your head, since you