mother's name was María Canela, and so she was called Nela; they say it is a dog's name. My name is María."
"Mariquita."
"María Nela they call me, or sometimes Canela's girl, and some say Marianela, and some merely Nela."
"And your master, is he fond of you?"
"Yes, Señor; he is very good to me. He says he sees with my eyes, for I take him everywhere, and tell him what everything is like."
"Everything that he cannot see?" The stranger seemed much interested in this conversation.
"Yes—I tell him everything. He asks me what a star is like, and I tell him all about it in such a way that it is the same to him as if he could see it. I explain it all—what the planets are like, and the clouds, and the sky, and the water, and the lightning, the weather-cocks, the butterflies, the mists, the snails, and the shapes and faces of men and animals. I tell him what is ugly and what is pretty, and so he gets to understand everything."
"I see; your work is no trifle. What is ugly and what is pretty! There is nothing.... You decide upon that question? Tell me, can you read?"
"No, Señor.—I tell you I am good for nothing."
She said this in a tone of perfect conviction, and the gesture that emphasized her protestation seemed to add: "You must be a great blockhead to fancy that I am good for anything."
"Would you not be glad if your friend, by the grace of God, should recover his sight?"
The girl did not answer at once, but after a pause she said:
"It is impossible."
"No, not impossible, only difficult and doubtful."
"The engineer who manages the mines did give my master's father some hope of it."
"Don Cárlos Golfin?"
"Yes, Señor. Don Cárlos has a brother who is an eye-doctor, and they say he gives sight to the blind, and makes those who squint look straight."
"What a clever man!"
"Yes; and when the eye-doctor wrote to Don Cárlos that he was coming to see him, his brother wrote to him to bring his instruments with him to try if he could make Pablo see."
"And has this good man been here yet?"
"No, sir; for he is always travelling about in England and America, and it seems it will be some time yet before he comes. Pablo laughs at it all, and says no man can give him what the Holy Virgin has denied him from his birth."
"Well—perhaps he is right. But are we not nearly there? For I see some chimneys which pour forth smoke darker than the bottomless pit, and a light too, which looks like a forge."
"Yes—here we are. Those are the roasting furnaces, which burn day and night. There, in front, are the machines for washing the ore; they only work by day. To the right-hand is the chemical workshop, and down there, last of all, the counting-house and offices."
The place seemed to lie in fact as Marianela indicated. In the absence of any wind a mist hung over the spot, shrouding the buildings in heavy, gaseous fog, and giving them a confused and fantastic outline against the moonlit sky.
"This is a pleasanter place to see for once than to live in," said Golfin, hastening onwards. "The cloud of vapor wraps round everything, and the lights have dim circles round them, like the moon on a sultry night. Which is the office?"
"Here, we are almost there."
After passing in front of the furnaces, where the heat made them hurry on, the doctor perceived a house which was no less dingy and smoky than the others, and at the same instant he heard a piano being played with a vigor bordering on frenzy.
"We have music here. I recognize my sister-in-law's touch and execution."
"It is Señorita Sofía who is playing," said María.
The lights of a busy household shone in the windows, and the balcony on the ground-floor was wide open. A small spark was visible, the spark of a cigar. Before the doctor could reach the spot, the spark flew off, describing a parabola of fire, and breaking into a thousand twinkling specks—the smoker had shaken the end off.
"There is that everlasting smoker!" cried the doctor, in a tone of affectionate delight. "Cárlos, Cárlos!"
"Teodoro!" exclaimed a voice from the balcony. The piano ceased like a singing-bird scared by a noise. Steps sounded through the house. The doctor gave his guide a silver coin, and ran up to the door.
CHAPTER IV.
STONY HEARTS.
Retracing her steps and jumping over the obstacles in her path, Nela made her way to a house on the left of the machine-sheds, and close to the stables where the sixty mules belonging to the establishment stood in grave meditation. The residence of the overseer, though of modern construction, was neither elegant nor even commodious. The roof was low, and it was too small by far to give adequate shelter to the parent couple of the Centenos—to their four children—to their cat—and to Nela into the bargain; but it figured, nevertheless, on the parchment plans of the settlement under the ostentatious name of "overseer's residence."
Inside, the house seemed to afford a practical illustration of the saying which we have already heard so emphatically stated by Marianela; namely, that she, Marianela, was of no good to anyone, only in the way. Somehow, in there, room was found for everything—for the father and mother, for their sons and their sons' tools, for a heap of rubbish, of the use of which no irrefragable proof has been found, for the cat, for the dish off which the cat was fed, for Tanasio's guitar, for the materials of which Tanasio made his garrotes—a kind of lidless hamper—for half a dozen old mule-halters, for the blackbird's cage, for two useless old boilers, for an altar—at which Dame Centeno worshipped the Divinity with offerings of artificial flowers and some patriarchal tapers, a perennial settlement for flies—in short, for everything and everybody excepting little María Canela. Constantly some one was heard to say: "You cannot take a step without falling over that confounded child, Nela!" or else:
"Get into your corner, do.—What a plague the creature is; she does nothing, and lets no one else do anything."
The house consisted of three rooms and a loft. The first of these served not only as dining-room and drawing-room, but also as the bedroom of the two elders; in the second slept the two young ladies, already grown-up women, and named La Mariuca and La Pepina. Tanasio, the eldest of all, stored himself in the garret, and Celipin, the youngest of the family and nearly twelve years old, had a bed in the kitchen—the innermost room, the dingiest, dampest and least habitable of the three rooms which composed the mansion of the Centenos.
Nela, during the many years of her residence there, had inhabited various nooks and corners, going from one to another, according to the exigencies of the moment, to make way for the thousand objects which served only to curtail the last scanty accommodation left for human beings. On some occasion—the precise facts are unknown to history—Tanasio, whose feet were as crippled as his brain, and who devoted himself to the manufacture of large hampers made of hazel rods, had placed in the kitchen a pile of at least half a dozen of these bulky trophies of his art. Marianela looked on, casting her eyes sadly around, and finding no corner left into which to creep; but the predicament itself inspired her with a happy idea, which she at once acted upon. She simply got into one of the baskets, and there passed the night in sound and blissful sleep. In fact, it was comfortable enough, and when it was cold she pulled another basket on the top. From that time, so long as there were garrotes (a local name for these coarse, open baskets) to be found, she never was at a loss for a crib, and the others would say of the child: "She sleeps like a jewel."
During meals, in the midst of a noisy discussion on the morning's work, a voice would suddenly say in rough tones: "Here!" and Nela would have