destroyed the hacienda at Chichén and the village of Pisté and carried their ravages, I believe, as far as Izamal. At the time of my visit the village of Pisté had been partly re-occupied and some of the ruined houses had been rebuilt, but the large church was still roofless and the whole of the site of the ancient city, as well as the church and buildings of the Hacienda, was covered by a dense jungle.
For the first few days I put up in the house of Stephen, the village judge and far the most important person in the small community. He was a young man, well-built and athletic, with frank and pleasant manners, and a certain air of command about him which became him well; altogether he was a capital specimen of a half-caste yeoman. He was perhaps a little too fond of aguardiente, but he seemed to live a happy life in a somewhat patriarchal fashion. His legal wife (for there were some others in the background) was the mother of a most delightful boy, about four years old, a child who would have attracted attention in any part of the world for his robust beauty and his charming genial manners and fearless ways. The villagers adored this boy, and in return he lorded it over them royally; he never showed any shyness of me, and we became fast friends at once; he used to prattle away to me in Maya about all that was going on, although I could not understand a word of his language. I don't think I ever met a child who attracted me so much, and it was hard to believe that he was related to the people around him, for he seemed to belong to some superior race.
I was able to engage a few men in Pisté, and set them to work at once to clear the jungle around the principal buildings; at the end of a week I took up my quarters at the ruins themselves, in a building known as the Casa Colorada. Soon after my arrival in the country I had engaged a man named Pablo Parera as a general overseer, but he proved to be of very little use to me, and it was no great loss when, early in March, he begged a fortnight's leave of absence, saying that he had received news that his mother was dying in Merida. He was very circumstantial about the doctor's report on the lung trouble from which his mother was suffering, and at his earnest request I gave him the money for his journey and an order on my agent in Merida for a month's pay in advance, as he expressed himself most anxious to return to me. Early the next morning he set out on his journey. It so happened that the next day I had to ride into Izamal, a distance of about forty miles, on business, where I chanced to hear that my friend Pablo had passed a cheerful evening the night before, apparently quite forgetful of his dying mother, and, moreover, that he had boasted that he well understood how to manage me, and was going on to Merida to have a good time at the
