324 



THE ADVENTURES OF 



" Child, may God bless you !" 

 " Are we to consider ourselves your guests ?" 

 " Yes, you are the guests of Coyotepec ; come along 

 with me." 



Sumichrast and l'Encuerado also approached the horse- 

 man, who dismounted and then led the way. The latter 

 conversed with the Indian in the Mistec tongue, an idiom 

 which Lucien alone could understand, he having been 

 taught it by PEncuerado. From the way in which the old 

 man scanned us, I imagined that l'Encuerado had repre- 

 sented us to him as white sorcerers of no ordinary skill. 



Coyotepec — or " Stone Wolf " — might have been about 

 seventy years of age. He was born in this ravine, to 

 which he had given the name of the " Mountains Mouth" 

 though I am ignorant of the reason for the designation. 

 He had been taken, when very young, by one of his uncles 

 to Puebla, but he had soon left the city with the intention 

 of rebuilding the paternal hut, and of knowing nothing of 

 the world beyond his own domain. His six children were 

 all married and lived near him, and the little colony num- 

 bered as many as thirty individuals. He was an Indian 

 of the Tlascalan race, as robust and nimble as a man of 

 forty, of middle height, with a brown skin. He wore a 

 hat made of palm-tree straw, and was dressed in a white 

 woollen jacket, fastened in round the waist like a blouse ; 

 cotton drawers, scarcely covering his knees, completed his 

 costume. 



"What is the nearest town to this?" asked Sumichrast. 



" Puebla," was the answer. 



"How far off is it?" 



" About eight days' journey." 



As the usual day's journey of the Indian is ten leagues a 

 day, the distance must have been about eighty leagues. 

 The old man could not furnish us with any other geo- 



