she tempted it with bread-crumbs, with no other effect than to stiffen it into stony astonishment.  She wondered if she should become like the prisoners she had read of in books, who poured out their solitary affections on noisome creatures, and she regretted even the mustang, which with the buggy had disappeared under the charge of some unknown retainer on her arrival.  Was she not a prisoner?  The shutterless windows, yawning doors, and open gate refuted her suggestion, but the encompassing solitude and trackless waste still held her captive.  Poindexter had told her it was four miles to the shanty; she might walk there.  Why had she given her word that she would remain at the rancho until he returned?

The long day crept monotonously away, and she welcomed the night which shut out the dreary prospect.  But it brought no cessation of the harassing wind without, nor surcease of the nervous irritation its perpetual and even activity wrought upon her.  It haunted her pillow even in her exhausted sleep, and seemed to impatiently beckon her to rise and follow it.  It brought her feverish dreams of her husband, footsore and weary, staggering forward under its pitiless lash and clamorous outcry; she would have gone to his assistance, but when she reached his side and held out her arms to him it hurried her past with merciless power, and, bearing her away, left him hopelessly behind.  It was broad day when she awoke.  The usual night showers of the waning rainy season had left no trace in sky or meadow; the fervid morning sun had already dried the patio; only the restless, harrying wind remained.

Mrs. Tucker arose with a resolve.  She had learned from Concha on the previous evening that a part of the shanty was used as a tienda or shop for the laborers and rancheros.  Under the necessity of purchasing some articles, she would go there and for a moment mingle with those people, who would not recognize her.  Even if they did, her instinct told her it would be less to be feared than the hopeless uncertainty of another day.  As she left the house the wind seemed to seize her as in her dream, and hurry her along with it, until in a few moments the walls of the low casa sank into the earth again and she was alone, but for the breeze on the solitary plain.  The level distance glittered in the sharp light, a few crows with slant wings dipped and ran down the wind before her, and a passing gleam on the marsh was explained by the far-off cry of a curlew.

She had walked for an hour, upheld by the stimulus of light and morning air, when the cluster of scrub oaks, which was her destination, opened enough to show two rambling sheds, before one of which was a wooden platform containing a few barrels and bones.  As she approached nearer, she could see that one or two horses were tethered under the trees, that their riders were lounging by a horse-trough, and that over an open door the word Tienda was rudely painted on a board, and as rudely illustrated by the wares displayed