The Rover of the Andes | Page 3

Peru, they are always prepared, for plunder-- ready to make hay while the sun shines. I only hope, Senhor Armstrong, that--but come, let us advance and see before the sun sets."
Turning abruptly as he spoke, the man mounted his mule and rode briskly up the winding road, followed by the Indian girl and our Englishman.
At the second turning of the road they reached a spot where an opening in the hills revealed the level country below, stretching away into illimitable distance.
As had been anticipated, they here came upon the mills they were in quest of. The Peruvian reined up abruptly and looked back.
"I feared as much," he said in a low tone as the Englishman rode forward.
Rendered anxious by the man's manner, Lawrence Armstrong sprang from his mule and pushed forward, but suddenly stopped and stood with clasped hands and a gaze of agony.
For there stood the ruins of his early home--where his mother had died while he was yet a child, where his father had made a fortune, which, in his desolation, he had failed to enjoy, and where he finally died, leaving his possessions to his only child.
The troops had visited the spot, fired no doubt with patriotic fervour and knowing its owner to be wealthy. They had sacked the place, feasted on the provisions, drunk the wines, smashed up, by way of pleasantry, all the valuables that were too heavy to carry away, and, finally, setting fire to the place, had marched off to other fields of "glory."
It was a tremendous blow to poor Lawrence, coming as he did fresh from college in a peaceful land, and full of the reminiscences of childhood.
Sitting down on a broken wall, he bowed his head and wept bitterly-- though silently--while the Peruvian, quietly retiring with the Indian girl, left him alone.
The first paroxysm of grief over, young Armstrong rose, and began sadly to wander about the ruins. It had been an extensive structure, fitted with all the most approved appliances of mechanism which wealth could purchase. These now helped to enhance the wild aspect of the wreck, for iron girders had been twisted by the action of fire into snake-like convolutions in some places, while, in others, their ends stuck out fantastically from the blackened walls. Beautiful furniture had been smashed up to furnish firewood for the cooking of the meal with which the heroic troops had refreshed themselves before leaving, while a number of broken wine-bottles at the side of a rosewood writing-desk with an empty bottle on the top of it and heaps of stones and pebbles around, suggested the idea that the warriors had mingled light amusement with sterner business. The roofs of most of the buildings had fallen in; the window-frames, where spared by the fire, had been torn out; and a pianoforte, which lay on its back on the grass, showed evidence of having undergone an examination of its internal arrangements, with the aid of the butt-ends of muskets.
"And this is the result of war!" muttered the young man, at last breaking silence.
"Only one phase of it," replied a voice at his side, in tones of exceeding bitterness; "you must imagine a few corpses of slaughtered men and women and children, if you would have a perfect picture of war."
The speaker was the Peruvian, who had quietly approached to say that if they wished to reach the next resting-place before dark it was necessary to proceed without delay.
"But perhaps," he added, "you do not intend to go further. No doubt this was to have been the end of your journey had all been well. It can scarcely, I fear, be the end of it now. I do not wish to intrude upon your sorrows, Mr Armstrong, but my business will not admit of delay. I must push on, yet I would not do so without expressing my profound sympathy, and offering to aid you if it lies in my power."
There was a tone and look about the man which awoke a feeling of gratitude and confidence in the forlorn youth's heart.
"You are very kind," he said, "but it is not in the power of man to help me. As your business is urgent you had better go and leave me. I thank you for the sympathy you express--yet stay. You cannot advance much further to-night, why not encamp here? There used to be a small hut or out-house not far-off, in which my father spent much of his leisure. Perhaps the--the--"
"Patriots!" suggested the Peruvian.
"The scoundrels," said Lawrence, "may have spared or overlooked it. The hut would furnish shelter enough, and we have provisions with us."
After a moment's reflection the Peruvian assented to this proposal, and, leaving the ruins together, they returned to the road, where they found the Indian girl holding the youth's mule as