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 like a magician, all now in the hands of this girl, all now about to take wings and fly out of his family's reach forever. "It cannot be done so easily, Helena. There is much to consider before pulling down shame upon my house, disgrace upon your own."

"Disgrace! And she would buy a lover for a price!" Roberto groaned, burning already in the fire of humiliation.

"It is only the—the—disgraceful sort you know so well, Roberto, who have love to sell for a price," she said. "Don Abrahan, I leave you to your repose."

"Youth is too quick," said Don Abrahan regretfully, as Helena disappeared down the dark hall, leaving her candle on the window-sill to light them to such repose as the night's upheaval had left them. "Tomorrow you will repair the damage with soft words."

"Tomorrow," said Roberto portentously, "it will be another thing. I am no longer a boy. I have grown the teeth of a man this night; I can bite."


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OBERTO found the air of his room stifling, the confinement of its walls oppressive. It seemed that the teeth of a man, which he had be come cognizant of possessing only that hour, ached for something to fasten upon and try their strength, urging him out into the open with savage restlessness.

His door opened into the wide patio between the wings of the house, where an immense pepper tree rose high above the roof, its softly draped foliage blue-tinted in the moonlight like a vast, still smoke. There was no light in the house as Roberto stood a little while in the patio, drowned in the gloom of the great tree's shadow. If Helena's conscience troubled her on account of this night's rebellion, she hid the shame of it in the dark.

That was as it should be, Roberto thought. It would have been satisfying to him to know that she was bowed in remorseful shame at her prayers; he suspected, with resentful anger, that she was asleep in her bed.

All was as quiet outside the house as within rhe men who had ridden from the ranch, but few in number, mean-spirited fellows all, excepting Simon alone, had found places to stretch them-

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 selves and sleep. It was nothing to them whether Gabriel Henderson went free or was taken; nothing to them whether the power and dignity of Don Abrahan's house rose or fell. Vengeful, bitter, contemptuous of them all, Roberto went to the front of the house and into the broad road that passed before it, the fire of his passion burning the desire for sleep.

Along this road'a little way toward the north he walked, striding rapidly, his spurs clicking at his heels. The land in this valley was sandy, soft, almost white as snow in the bright moonlight, far different from the black, tenuous adobe of his father's homestead. Between the little groves of live-oaks which grew in this rich valley the erratic highway ran, the royal road, the king's highway, of the old mission days. The Indians made it first between their villages, long before the zeal of the Franciscan fathers brought them to that shore; the traffic of the missionaries broadened it, and gave it the dignity of its name.

Roberto felt that his heart was nested in this valley, toward which he had yearned sometimes among the dissipations of the capital. He had intended, all the years of his betrothal to Helena, to establish the dignity of his house here on the land that the Yankee captain, who had been accepted as an equal of the best in that country, had acquired by grant for some service to the Mexican government, real or contrived, which was forgotten now. But the land remained, no matter for


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 the evanescent memory of those who gave it or him who received. It yielded as no other rancho in that part of the country under the wise management of John Toberman, who had given up herding ships on the sea for the herding of cattle on the land.

It was a wrench to give up that plantation, with its green vegas, its stream of living water that came down from the mountains to refresh the great herds, its groves of oak and sycamore trees, its barley and wheat fields, its mansion by the roadside. Yet honor was dearer to a man than lands and herds. At least custom made it so, Roberto said, beginning to feel his anger against Helena diminish in weighing it against what it would cost him. Custom was wrong in many things, as the constant abandonment of old usages proved. Custom was cruel when it separated a man from his dreams and desires in such manner as this.

Roberto's feet found a slower pace, the boiling turmoil of his anger cooled, as these considerations assailed him. Helena was not guilty of any indecorum that smirched her; of that he was well satisfied. She was modern, she was disdainful of the old limitations upon her sex; the Yankee blood of that old captain had drowned the Castilian in her veins. It was wrong to judge her by the standards of that country, as it would be wrong for him to throw away a fortune on no sounder proof than this.

Soft words would repair this breach between


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 And if the novel is to be recognised as something more than a relaxation, it has also, I think, to be kept free from the restrictions imposed upon it by the fierce pedantries of those who would define a general form for it. Every art nowadays must steer its way between the rocks of trivial and degrading standards and the whirlpool of arbitrary and irrational criticism. Whenever criticism of any art becomes specialised and professional, whenever a class of adjudicators is brought into existence, those adjudicators are apt to become as a class distrustful of their immediate impressions, and anxious for methods of comparison between work and work, they begin to emulate the classifications and exact measurements of a science, and to set up ideals and rules as data for such classification and measurements. They develop an alleged sense of technic, which is too often no more than the attempt to exact a laboriousness of method, or to insist upon peculiarities of method which impress the professional critic not so much as being merits as being meritorious. This sort of thing has gone very far with the critical discussion both of the novel and the play. You have all heard that impressive dictum that some particular theatrical display, although moving, interesting, and continually entertaining from start to finish, was for occult technical reasons "not a play," and in the same way you are continually having your appreciation of fiction dashed by the mysterious parallel condemnation, that the story you like "isn't a novel." The novel has been treated as though its form was as well-defined as the sonnet. Some year or so ago, for example, there was a quite


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 them, he was confident, knowing the weakness of women well. A man could bend to soft words, even dissimulation, to save a fortune. That would be a trifling price. But consider Helena. If, by some strength of her alien strain that made her different in many ways from the women he knew best, she held to the repudiation of their betrothal, what was hetodo? Helena might refuse to accept his apology tomorrow; she might scorn him, and turn her cold white face away. It was a thing to pace slowly up and down here in the shadow of the roadside oaks and consider, hands behind the back like a thinking man.

A man must leave home, hunger for it, sigh for it, to return and perceive its beauties hitherto unknown, to feel its friendliness as he felt it here tonight. His heart rose in him, a tenderness of poetic feeling blended out the last shred of his anger, as he stood in the moonlight at the margin of the oak trees' shade, viewing the beauty of that place.

In the south stood the low chain of hills separating this broad valley from that in which the pueblo of Los Angeles lay; close at hand on the north, higher mountains rose, the crumbling granite ledges on their rough sides and summits glistening like snow.

Dark, repellent, the canyons of these mountains appeared, rough and unfriendly their steeps and mangy slopes. No trees graced them, little verdure. They seemed the great cinder-heap of a


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 burning world that the sea had rushed upon and extinguished in some long-distant age. Even with their austerity chastened in the moonlight, there was no invitation to man in the face they presented.

Yet Roberto knew that their sides were covered with low-growing shrubs, with sweet-scented plants, with sage and holly and honey-bearing flowers, which left a man's clothing perfumed by their touch when he threaded the tangle of their barring limbs. Green things grew there which sheep and cattle fattened on; the sage-bloom called the bees to gather such honey as never gladdened man's tongue in any other land. There was a great beneficence, a gentle kindness, even in the forbidding hills.

To the east Roberto could not see far, the vision hemmed by trees, but there he knew the valley came down to a point, like a river flowing between the hills. To the west it broadened for miles, closing again before coming quite to the sea. In that direction the road turned from San Fernando Mission, threading to Santa Barbara and, in its weary course, to Monterey.

It was clear in the valley this night, not a curl of mist drifted along the hills, a sweet languor in its placidity that embraced a man and made him glad. He could dissemble, he could put pride aside, stoop to soft words to beguile a foolish girl's ear, for the blessings of that place. This knowledge that he had teeth to bite made a man wiser, fortified his courage like a pistol in the belt.


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 With these reflections over him, the thought of his vengeance against Gabriel Henderson put aside for that hour, Roberto walked on up the road, thinking nothing of the time, sleep a stranger to his eyes. There grew mesquite and screw-bean by the roadside, cactus and chaparral, and grass in bunches that put up tall plumes. Soon Roberto was far beyond sight of the ranchhouse, his eyes on the white road, the weight of his new manhood upon him making him grave.

Roberto was startled out of his meditations by the beat of a horse's feet in the road to the north. Before the rider came in sight around one of the goat-path windings of the highway, Roberto knew that the horse had been ridden hard, and far. He stood in the middle of the road, curious to know who had come from a distance in such pressure, whither he was bound, and the mission that urged him to ride in haste through the night.

The rider halted suddenly when he rounded the turn of the road, seeing his way blocked by a man. He seemed to hesitate for a moment between advance and flight. Roberto, prickling with a keen suspicion that all was not honest with the rider, hailed him.

"Advance!" he said, in commanding voice.

The rider lifted his right hand in signal that he understood, and came forward slowly.

"Can you direct me to the Sprague ranch?" he inquired, in the speech of a common man. Roberto saw that he wore the dress of a vaquero,


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 or cattleherder. His carriage in the saddle fixed him as one of that calling.

"It is close by," Roberto replied, laying hold of the bridle rein as a man might do a friend's. Yet there was nothing of friendliness in the young man's bearing; much of suspicious severity, and question of the other's right to pass. "Who is it you have business with there at this late hour?"

"It is a man's own business, whatever it may be," the horseman replied, undisturbed by Roberto's hostility. "Would you deny a man the road, like a bandit?"

"I am a kinsman of Miss Sprague, I have the right to stop any stranger who comes looking for her at this hour of the night. If your business is honest, you will not hesitate to tell me what it is."

"You might be her brother?"

"No, not her brother. I am a distant relative, but my authority is not to be questioned."

"Only a distant relative!" said the rider, with a short laugh. "But you stop a man in the road with a pistol under your fingers. If you were a near relative, a brother or a cousin, maybe you would shoot a man if he even looked in the lady's direction? You are too quick for me, young gentleman. Let go my bridle—I must be on my way."

He seemed to hold Roberto in little seriousness, in trifling account. His teeth flashed in a quick smile; he sat in a posture of graceful indulgence,


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 quite disfurnished him of the means at present, the more beast he, he called himself, to put it out of his power to serve so good a friend; and he counted it one of his greatest afflictions that his ability should fail him to pleasure such an honourable gentleman.

Who can call any man friend that dips in the same dish with him? just of this metal is every flatterer. In the recollection of everybody Timon had been a father to this Lucius, had kept up his credit with his purse; Timon's money had gone to pay the wages of his servants, to pay the hire of the labourers who had sweat, to build the fine houses which Lucius's pride had made necessary to him: yet, oh! the monster which man makes himself when he proves ungrateful! this Lucius now denied to Timon a sum, which, in respect of what Timon had bestowed on him, was less than charitable men afford to beggars.

Sempronius, and every one of these mercenary lords to whom Timon applied in their turn, returned the same evasive answer or direct denial; even Ventidius, the redeemed and now rich Ventidius, refused to assist him with the loan of those five talents which Timon had not lent but generously given him in his distress.

Now was Timon as much avoided in his poverty as he had been courted and resorted to in his riches. Now the same tongues which had been loudest in his praises, extolling him as bountiful, liberal, and open handed, were not ashamed to censure that very bounty as folly, that liberality as profuseness, though it had shown itself folly in nothing so truly as in the selection of such unworthy creatures as themselves for its objects. Now was Timon's princely mansion forsaken, and become a shunned and hated place, a place for men to pass by, not a place, as formerly, where every passenger must stop and taste


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 one hand on his hip, his bridle reins held high in the other.

"Who sent you?" Roberto demanded with all the sternness of his privileged class.

"A man with fingers on his hands, and money in them to pay for what he wanted. That's enough for me to know; it will have to be enough for you."

"Where do you come from? impertinent scoundrel!"

"Have you heard of Monterey, little man?" the vaquero asked, patronizingly insolent, as a free man who knows his strength and despises that of another. "Well then, I come from Monterey. I bring letters for the young lady. Whether they are from a lover, that is another thing. Now let go my bridle— permit me."

The vaquero leaned as he spoke, laying hold of Roberto's wrist to remove his hand from the rein. His cool insolence, his impertinent disregard of any force that his challenger might use to prevent his going, seemed to Roberto a mighty insult to his new manhood, as it doubtless was intended to be.

"Get down!" Roberto commanded, presenting his pistol at the rider's ribs.

"Presently—at the lady's door," the messenger replied, his teeth white in the moonlight as he laughed.

With the words he set spur to his horse, waking in the agany of the cruel thrust the spirit that


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 seemed beaten out of the weary animal. It bounded forward, the dust of its high-flung hoofs in Roberto's face.

The chaparral echoed with a sound strange and discordant in the placidity of that night. Don Roberto had snapped his teeth.


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ONLY know that Don Roberto has killed a man, that they have brought his body wrapped in tentcloth and laid it near the olive press, under the trees. That is all I know."

Doña Carlota was not greatly moved by the event. Dead men had come in her way before, and men who had fallen by violence. She was less agitated in the relation of this news than over the prospect last night that her betrayal of the American's presence on the ranch might be discovered by her niece. She was keen enough to see that the agitation had passed to the other side of the hearth, so to speak. It was Helena's face that grew white, and set in little lines of pain, when this news of Don Roberto's exploit was related.

"You didn't hear them say who it was? when, where, it happened?" Helena inquired.

She sat as she had started from sleep at her aunt's summons to hear this news, the bedclothes flung aside, her hair showering on her shoulders, dread and anxiety staring from her eyes.

"It may be the one they came to find. It was of about that length—I saw it as they carried it by the window. I'll send Rosa with coffee"


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 "No. But, Auntie Carlota, ask them—find out who it was, why it was that Roberto"

"There! there is Don Abrahan calling me, roaring again like a bear. These men! what a trouble!"

Doña Carlota left hurriedly, the sound of Don Abrahan's voice swelling; as she opened Helena's chamber door.

"Doña Carlota, Doña Carlota!" the summons sounded. And fainter, as the door closed, as if he had turned his back: "Doña Carlota!" with impatient clapping of the hands.

Doña Carlota made no haste to appear before her kinsman and learn his pleasure. She stood a moment at Helena's door, a look of supreme satisfaction in her face, crossed the hall to the door opening into the patio and stood a little while looking at the tender morning sun in the leaves of the pepper tree.

"I was right, I was justified; my conscience is clear," she said. "Yes, Don Abrahan. I am here, I am here. I am coming as fast as my feet can carry me."

Helena hastened her toilet, oppressed by a dread that made her morning dark. Sleep had been long coming to her last night; she had lain planning and devising, her mind flooded by this breaking down of traditional submission. When sleep came, it had locked her fast, she had heard nothing of the coming and going when the body of the slain man was brought and laid beneath the olive trees. Had


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 she slept while they hunted this trusting stranger and killed him at her very door?

The thought wrung her heart with poignant regret. It seemed equal to betrayal to offer a man sanctuary that she could not insure, a refuge that had become a trap. She had not looked deep enough into Doña Carlota's crafty eyes when she related this tragic intelligence; not deep enough to see that her purpose was only one of leading her young ward on to the betrayal of what hid in her heart. Now Doña Carlota knew; she knew better than Helena herself, or more than Helena would have owned, at least, if confronted with the demand by her own conscience.

Doña Carlota was back at Helena's door while she was still braiding her hair. This time with a summons from Don Abrahan that amounted to a command. As quickly as she could dress she was to attend the pleasure of Don Abrahan in the parlor. It must be something terrible, Doña Carlota said, now unmistakably alarmed. There was a look in Don Abrahan's face to make a woman's heart sink low.

Don Abrahan sat at a small table near the window, papers spread before him; Roberto waited at the door like a butler, ciosing it behind Helena sharply when she entered, shutting Doña Carlota out with summary rudeness. Don Abrahan rose, tall, gaunt, his roomy clothing loose upon his limbs. Helena stood in questioning hesitation, looking from Don Abrahan to his son. She seemed a


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 stranger in her own house, these two had taken such authoritative control.

Don Abrahan turned his hand in slow, graceful motion to a chair, remaining standing in his punctilious way of deferential grace until she was seated. Roberto stood with his back to the door, his pistol at his side.

This house was not so pretentious as Don Abrahan's, there being nothing grand in its proportions at all, compared with the bright and beautiful homes which stand in that same valley today. It was a squat, flat building of gray adobe, severely simple, conforming in all particulars with the traditional plan of houses of the gentry in California of that period, following the older traditions of an older land. All rooms faced upon the patio, with doors admitting to it. In the front of the house there was the hall in the center, a room on either hand; in the wings the kitchen and sleeping rooms. The parlor in which this small party gathered this morning was not a large room. The morning sun did not brighten it, the house facing the west. Cedar beams across the ceiling, its dark draperies and somber furnishings, gave it a solemnity fitting to a solemn hour.

And this seemed to Helena a most solemn and portentous hour, indeed. Don Abrahan's face was grave, his demeanor judicially severe. Roberto, standing with arms folded on his breast, appeared like one waiting to enforce the judgment of some stern and pitiless court. They might have


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 been officers of the Holy Inquisition, Helena thought, judged by the unsympathetic harshness of their faces, their fixed determination upon the business that lay in their hands.

Don Abrahan sat silent a little spell, drawing the written sheets of paper together before him, arranging them in a way that seemed to tell of his thoughts being detached from the action of his hands. Helena's heart was laboring as if it lay under a stone; her limbs trembled, her hands were cold. She did not know that Don Abrahan was a master of suspense; that every movement of his hand was calculated, every moment of silence gauged against the perturbation of her breast.

"There is a matter of gravity on our hands, Helena, my desired," Don Abrahan began, his measured words, his slowly lifted head, his deliberate, searching eyes, all adding to the weight of that cold stone which seemed pressing upon the warmth of her redundant heart. "If I have your permission, I will speak."

"Assuredly, Don Abrahan."

"We spoke last night, Helena, of your betrothal to my son."

Don Abrahan paused; his eyes sought the papers on the table, the first of which he lifted, seeming to read beneath.

"That is ended, Don Abrahan," Helena said, the tremor of her heart in her words.

"It is a heavy thing to speak of lightly, and in haste, as I said last night, my dear. Let us go


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 back a little way, let us reconsider. Do you realize the affront, the humiliation, the insult, you are laying on my son, my house, by this hasty, capricious act?"

"There is neither insult nor humiliation intended, sir. I realize that I could not be happy with your son. That is the first consideration. I could not honor him, love him, or even respect him, as a woman should the man she marries."

Helena's spirit began to lift, the dread to ease its compression on her bosom. She looked Don Abrahan in the eyes, a flush enlivening her pale cheeks.

"In what way has my son forfeited his claim upon your respect, my love?"

"I told you last night."

"Rumors may easily grow into slanders between here and the capital," Don Abrahan said, in stern reproval. "If we are to credit all our suspicions, believe all we hear, accept every small circumstance as damning evidence, we will soon drive happiness and tranquillity out of our lives. Who of us is pure in all things? Who has not transgressed?"

"The source of my information cannot he impeached," Helena replied. "If you have called this solemn court to try me, Don Abrahan, you have exceeded any and all authority that I grant to your position and your years. I am free, I am in my right mind. I will not marry Roberto. You cannot force me to it, even with your valiant son guarding the door!"


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 "The small frivolities, the mild indiscretions—all this the world grants a man in his youth, Helena. It is different with a man."

"Let it pass; there will be many ready to accept the defense. As for me, I cannot, Don Abrahan."

"It is strange that you should come to this conclusion at this late hour, Helena. There was no word of it before the last day of the fiesta, no word"

"Two days after I left your house, Don Abrahan, letters came from my friends in the capital. But I doubt, even without the things revealed to me"

"Lies, slanders," said Don Abrahan, disdain in the swelling of his nostrils, the rocking of his head. "Have I not been young? It is the fashion to slander such."

"Your son has an able advocate, Don Abrahan," she said, smiling a bit scornfully. "Do we have to go on with the discussion, only to come to nothing in the end?"

"It is soon done," Don Abrahan declared with sudden sternness, rising to his feet. "My son stands ready to forget the past, out of his great and honorable love for you, to accept you with all the taint of suspicion"

"Don Abrahan! Don Abrahan!"

Helena sprang up, shocked, outraged. It seemed as if forbearance had broken with his words, that she would fly at him and tear out his tongue.


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 "He is generous enough, in the light of his great affection," Don Abrahan continued, hard in his tone, inflexible of purpose, "to close his eyes upon what would appear sufficient evidence to another, a less sophisticated man, and take you to his arms as his wife."

"The rake, the libertine!" she denounced Roberto, turning on him furiously. "Oh, you have no words of your own, you coward!"

"Silence!" Don Abrahan commanded. "He is under my interdiction, I speak for both. He is too generous to believe your intrigue with an inferior amounts to absolute guilt"

"Intrigue! you viper!"

"More as an escapade of adventurous youth, a thing to be censured, but forgiven."

"Generous gentleman!" she mocked. "And if I refuse to marry him, the penalty will be publicity, disgrace."

"No. A gentleman learns early in life when to keep silent," Don Abrahan returned. "You will reconsider your hasty words?"

"No!"

"You will think slowly, and speak slower. My son forgives the escapade of the oak tree, he forgives"

"Forgives! What absolution can he show for his own crimes?"

"He will forget what has passed, he will accept this restored compact as if you never had broken it by word or deed."


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 of his wine and good cheer; now, instead of being thronged with feasting and tumultuous guests, it was beset with impatient and clamorous creditors, usurers, extortioners, fierce and intolerable in their demands, pleading bonds, interest, mortgages; iron-hearted men that would take no denial nor putting off, that Timon's house was now his jail, which he could not pass, nor go in nor out for them; one demanding his due of fifty talents, another bringing in a bill of five thousand crowns, which if he would tell out his blood by drops, and pay them so, he had not enough in his body to discharge, drop by drop.

In this desperate and irremediable state (as it seemed) of his affairs, the eyes of all men were suddenly surprised at a new and incredible lustre which this setting sun put forth. Once more lord Timon proclaimed a feast, to which he invited his accustomed guests, lords, ladies, all that was great or fashionable in Athens. Lord Lucius and Lucullus came, Ventidius, Sempronius, and the rest. Who more sorry now than these fawning wretches, when they found (as they thought) that lord Timon's poverty was all pretence, and had been only to make trial of their loves, to think that they should not have seen through the artifice at the time, and have had the cheap credit of obliging his lordship? yet who more glad to find the fountain of that noble bounty, which they had thought dried up, still fresh and running? They came dissembling, protesting, expressing deepest sorrow and shame, that when his lordship sent to them, they should have been so unfortunate as to want the present means to oblige so honourable a friend. But Timon begged them not to give such trifles a thought, for he had altogether forgotten it. And these base fawning lords, though they had denied -him money in his adversity, yet could not refuse their presence at this


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 "How magnificent!"

"Do you yield?"

"No, Don Abrahan, I do not yield. There is no act of purgation, there is no fire of penance, that can cleanse him in my sight. To add to his crimes against women, it is said he killed a man last night. Who was it? Why was it done, here at my very door?"

"We are coming to that," Don Abrahan said.

He motioned her to her chair again, an invitation that passed unheeded. Seeing that she did not sit, he remained standing, lifting the papers from the table.

"It becomes necessary to tell you now what I have known these three days," Don Abrahan said. "The insolent aggressions of the Americans have driven our patient nation to resent them at last. War has been declared; battles have been fought on the Rio Grande. The triumphant Mexican army is sweeping forward to Washington. The man whom my son challenged in the road last night was a spy, carrying intelligence to spies. This correspondence before me was taken from him. Part of it was addressed to you."

Don Abrahan held up the written sheets, half a dozen or so in number. Helena put out her hand quickly, more in appeal than demand. Don Abrahan pressed the correspondence against his breast, denying her, lifting a checking hand. His face was forbidding, his accusing voice was cold.

"I have suspected Toberman a long time of


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 plotting with the Americans and traitors in the north, but I lacked absolute proof until this day. It was beyond the limit of reason to include you, Helena."

Helena was not thinking of herself that moment; she was not crushed and confounded as her silence might be misunderstood. Her heart was beating fast, the warm blood was surging into her brain, quickening it to all the alert resourcefulness that was her heritage. Toberman had escaped, Toberman was safe, thank God! That was her thought, that was her exultation. Toberman was riding free. For herself and her peril, she had no thought.

"Perilous as your situation is, Helena," Don Abrahan said, "there is a door open to your salvation. You are young, you are under the influence of this man who has had your affairs in his hands since your father's death. He has misled you, he has brought you to this unwittingly, he"

"No, Don Abrahan," she denied, lifting her head proudly.

There was something in her voice, the ring of it, the proud defiance, that started Roberto out of his pose before the door. His folded arms fell to his sides, his fingers shaped as if to snatch a weapon. He moved a step toward her, his eyes distended in astonishment of the spirit revealed.

"I offer you this door," Don Abrahan said, unheeding her defiance. "I trust in my heart you


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 will accept the exit from this most grave situation. Let this compact between you and my son continue, let us proceed at once to the priest and celebrate the marriage. My son has begged me to offer you this out of the manly love he bears you, Helena, and from no other consideration. Accept, and you will be relieved of this taint of treason. It will be an easy matter in such case to place the burden of guilt where it belongs, on the head of the traitor who involved you in this, innocently, we"

"Roberto, forgive me!" Helena begged, turning to the young man impulsively, a light in her eyes that he never had seen before. "I have misjudged you. You must have a true, an honorable affection for me to offer me this."

"May God judge between us!" said Roberto, with such feeling that his words trembled on his lips.

"There is something in you better than I knew," she confessed, the honesty of her nature not permitting the covering of one little spark of gratitude. "I thought all the time you were anxious only to have my money and my lands, but this—but this"

"The lands? curse them! The gold? sink it in hell!" Roberto said, flinging his arms wide, his head thrown back in his dramatic fervor.

"Forgive me if I have wronged you by word or thought, Roberto. There is much in you that is manly, much, I am sure, that is good. I owe


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 you the confession of that much. But the compact cannot be renewed. We stand parted, never to unite. I would not buy my life with the betrayal of a friend."

"Think" Roberto began to plead.

"What a cowardly thing it would be," she seemed to conclude for him, but with a far different thought.

"If you refuse, it means the loss of your estate, degradation, imprisonment, perhaps death," Don Abrahan warned.

"Let it be so, then. I do refuse."

"What is this man, this alien who plays citizen for the purpose of introducing the enemy into this country, to you?" Roberto asked, perplexed, baffled, not able to understand. "Let him bear the blame, as he deserves to bear it. Nobody will believe you guilty."

"But I am guilty," she said, proud in the confession. "I have prayed for this war, I have prayed for the day when the United States army would march into this land"

"Silence!" Don Abrahan commanded, in stern, loud voice.

"The cruelties and injustices, the oppression of the strong, the misery of the poor—all this would come to an end, all of it will come to an end, when the United States army marches here!"

"Helena Sprague, as a magistrate of the republic I arrest you on the charge of treason," Don Abrahan solemnly declared. "I seize your lands


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 and properties, in the name of the republic; I lay hold upon your cattle, your goods, your money, your effects, in the name of the republic. Such as spurn mercy when it is offered, must burn in the fire of justice."

"Take them, then, and my life, if the republic wants it!" she said. She turned to Roberto, who stood by torn between loyalty to his country and love for its betrayer. "Toberman—is he gone, is he safe?" she asked.

"Toberman is under arrest, safely kept," Don Abrahan answered her. "I have sent to the pueblo for the military. Tomorrow Toberman will be shot as a spy."


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ENDERSON had waited all that day in the appointed place for Toberman, who was to bring him news of what he had learned regarding the feasibility of escaping out of that country by the northern road. It was within half an hour of sunset now, and no sign of Toberman.

Although he was well equipped with horse, pistol and clothing which Toberman had supplied him, out of his own resources, the overseer had given him to understand, placing the fugitive under no obligation on that score to the owner of the ranch, Henderson hesitated over making a start toward Monterey. Since coming to the Sprague ranch he had learned more of Abrahan Garvanza's power and influence in that part of California. A feudal baron never lived who could stretch a longer arm.

The governor of California, now stationed at Los Angeles, that pueblo having been made the capital lately, was a man under Don Abrahan's control. The forty soldiers who garrisoned the capital, given the choice between service in this distant land and completing their sentences for various felonies in the prisons at home, were at the beck and call of Don Abrahan, the general in


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 command being a relative of the Garvanza family, owing his station to its wide influence.

Toberman had told Henderson, and Helena Sprague had confirmed it, that the news of his escape from Don Abrahan's enforced service would have been carried to Monterey by the third day, incredible as it appeared to him. News spread with great rapidity among the Indians and lawless Mexicans who worked as vaqueros on the cattle ranches, and Don Abrahan had posted a reward of twenty dollars, gold, for the fugitive's capture and return.

Twenty dollars gold on the California coast in those pastoral days was equal to four head of cattle. A laborer would toil many months to earn that much. A vaquero did not gain a sum like it in half a year's riding after the herds. It would not be a matter of enmity toward him, Henderson understood, but the plain business one of making a handsome sum of money quickly, that would set the hand of every man, high and low, between Los Angeles and Monterey against his passage.

But there was an obscure way through the mountains, Toberman had told him, long and rough, that might lead to freedom if a trustworthy guide could be found. There seemed to be none in his employ whom he would trust in that capacity. It was on this business that Toberman had engaged to return this day and report.

Henderson watched the valley for his coming from the peak of a hill which seemed a mountain


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 that had sunk into the earth, a feature common to those rugged foothills. There was spread in the broad valley, running up into the inlets of the canyons, a haze of such density that it seemed as if the sea must have swept in to reclaim its ancient domain. This was as blue as the smoke of woodfires, the Indian summer haze of other lands intensified until it seemed almost palpable; blue as the upper ether of the clearest October skies.

This strange inflooding of what seemed smoke from mysterious and hidden fires obscured the view of the valley, where it stood at a level against the walls of the hills as definitely marked as water. Above this level the little mountains rose clear and sharp. Henderson gazed out over this transformation, moved by a strange feeling of friendliness and desire for this land.

An hour ago the sun had fallen brightly upon garish shoulder of scrub-patched hill, upon yellow break of sand in the valley among the green. It had revealed harshly the forbidding features of the country, as daylight strips an aged beauty of her sad pretense. Now a veil had been drawn; the sublimity of the change was such as hurt the heart with longing for the sympathetic vibration that could quiver with it and make it wholly understood.

Henderson gave up his vigil on the hill-top at dusk, returning to his camp. This was a little hut built of boulders from a mountain stream, laid together with mud, a sheep-herder's shelter against


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 the winter rains. The place was a sequestered canyon, many miles from the homestead of the ranch, unfrequented by herdsmen at this season. Toberman had assured the fugitive that he might rest in security there until his affairs took a better turn.

This feeling, doubtful at first, had gradually laid its spell over Henderson as the days passed without sight of any human invasion. Toberman had conducted him to the place secretly, at night, by cunning ways which he believed left no track. Henderson's surprise was the greater, as a consequence of all this caution, to find Simon sitting placidly in the cabin door when he came down from watching the valley for Toberman.

Simon sat with his long knees updrawn, hands idly hooked in front of them, in the patient, immobile fashion such as becomes a habit in people only who have served long in subjugation and waited without hope. The tragedy of his race was in his pose, the watcher who had been set over other men's treasures, none of which he ever was destined to touch or share. But in Simon's case, at least, it was only a racial trait. There was nothing of humility in him, even in the presence of Don Abrahan, although of patience for long and unrewarded vigils he must have owned his share.

He rose at Henderson's approach, unfolding his thin length with considerable spryness, advancing with hand extended in demonstration of keen friendship.


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 "Is it you, my little friend Gabriel?" he hailed, great token of pleasure in his voice. "I thought you were dead, I thought the wolves had made a dinner on you. Come on, my boy—how are you, how have you passed?"

Henderson's horse was picketed some distance down the canyon; Simon was directly in the way between them. Henderson distrusted the friendly show, although Simon appeared to be unarmed and quite genuine in his expression of pleasure. There seemed little warrant for drawing a weapon on him, although the thick growth of shrubs and small trees around the cabin might hide twenty of Don Abrahan's men.

Henderson replied to the flood of affectionate inquiry that all was well with him; asked of Simon's family, according to the custom, shook hands with him, accepted a cigarette. He wondered whether Toberman had betrayed him, dismissing the suspicion at once as unworthy.

He could not know, certainly, of the little talk between Don Abrahan and Simon the night before, or of the small pieces of gold that had passed from the patron's hand in the dark. He could not have known, indeed, that the old men who sit in the sun, wrapped in introspection, see more than passes by them in the road.

"So, then, all is forgiven, my little Gabriel," Simon hastened to explain, with evidence of great joy in his news. "Don Abrahan has sent me, on the directions for finding you that the good John


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 new blaze of his returning prosperity. For the swallow follows not summer more willingly than men of these dispositions follow the good fortunes of the great, nor more willingly leaves winter than these shrink from the first appearance of a reverse; such summer birds are men. But now with music and state the banquet of smoking dishes was served up; and when the guests had a little done admiring whence the bankrupt Timon could find means to furnish so costly a feast, some doubting whether the scene which they saw was real, as scarce trusting their own eyes; at a signal given, the dishes were uncovered, and Timon's drift appeared: instead of those varieties and far-fetched dainties which they expected, that Timon's epicurean table in past times had so liberally presented, now appeared under the covers of these dishes a preparation more suitable to Timon's poverty, nothing but a little smoke and lukewarm water, fit feast for this knot of mouth-friends, whose professions were indeed smoke, and their hearts lukewarm and slippery as the water with which Timon welcomed his astonished guests, bidding them, "Uncover, dogs, and lap;" and before they could recover their surprise, sprinkling it in their faces, that they might have enough, and throwing dishes and all after them, who now ran huddling out, lords, ladies, with their caps snatched up in haste, a splendid confusion, Timon pursuing them, still calling them what they were, "smooth smiling parasites, destroyers under the mask of courtesy, affable wolves, meek bears, fools of fortune, feast-friends, time-flies." They, crowding out to avoid him, left the house more willingly than they had entered it; some losing their gowns and caps, and some their jewels in the hurry, all glad to escape out of the presence of such a mad lord, and from the ridicule of his mock banquet.


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 Toberman gave us. I have come with Don Abrahan's forgiveness in my hand for the wrong you did the good patron in running away from him. As for the little blow you gave Roberto, there is nobody in thirty miles that does not say bravo to that deed."

Simon found English too slow for his tidings. He trusted to his late pupil in his native idiom to understand.

"Toberman told you where to come, did he?"

Henderson questioned that declaration; it set a new current of suspicion and distrust running. Yet, on the other hand, Toberman might have sent Simon, saving himself the time from his activities that the journey would take. It seemed only the natural thing for a man of Toberman's consequence to do. He could not be expected to ride messenger in a matter that had lost its bottom like a barrel in the sun.

It must be that Don Abrahan had seen a new light. Perhaps the long-expected news had come from the north that the United States had seized California and added it to its domain. In such case, Don Abrahan's forgiveness would find a ready explanation.

"He says to tell you," Simon replied, "that there is no longer any need for you to think of going away to the north, and Don Abrahan speaks in the same voice. Don Abrahan says he will get you a ticket home in a ship that is in the harbor now, loading hides. It is a Boston ship, with such


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 trees sticking out of it that it made my head swim to look at the tops of them. Yes. I, myself, saw this ship three days ago at the harbor. So you will return?"

"Are you here alone, Simon? there's no treachery in this?"

"As I hope to have two teeth when I am ninety, I am here alone, Gabriel."

"Where is your horse?"

"Down there in the canyon with yours, like a man that has come to dinner with his friend."

"And Don Abrahan said he'd let it all pass, the little trouble with Roberto, and everything?"

"Don Abrahan said, 'Tell my little son Gabriel that all is forgiven.' He said the ship would sail in three days. We must hurry, Gabriel."

"First, we can't do better than imitate our horses," Henderson said, his confidence growing, suspicion all but dispelled. "Let's get some supper before we start, Simon. I'm hungry; your news is good for the appetite."

Simon was heartily in favor of the refreshment. He bestirred himself to assist, with much talk and many English oaths. The firelight revealed the same lively satisfaction in his face as quickened his words, as if Henderson's absolution warmed him like a fire built to cheer another man.

Although largely assured by Simon's manner of open honesty, Henderson watched him closely. He had heard the mule-driver air his peculiar morals often enough to ground a deep and abiding


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 distrust of his ability to do anything exactly straightforward. Simon was apparently unarmed, but Henderson suspected that a pistol was concealed somewhere in his loose clothing, ready to his hand.

"Don Abrahan has come to Helena Sprague's ranch, where he is waiting to welcome you and take you to his breast," Simon said, sitting in the light of the little fire after the hastily-prepared supper had been eaten. "We think he has found out something about you, that you are the son of a family, or something grand."

"And Roberto? is he there?"

"Roberto went on to Monterey today, I heard it said. Seven doctors! what a dark night it is here in the hills!"

"Tet will be darker before it's lighter. We'd better go."

"Yes, the ship will not wait, Don Abrahan will wonder at our delay. What was that?"

Simon started, listening, hand lifted to impose silence.

"Coyotes, very likely," Henderson replied, unconcerned. "They come around here at night."

"It sounded like a horse." Simon rose, leaning into the dark, listening hard. "If mine has got loose!"

He walked away a little distance, going softly, almost immediately disappearing in the dark, which was deeper for the wooded side of the canyon forming the background of the camp. Henderson


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 heard him swearing presently around the corner of the hut, disturbing the bushes softly as if he sought a passage through.

"A bird in the bushes, I think," Simon said, turning back. "Do you leave your fire uncovered these dry days?"

"I drown it," Henderson said.

"Go ahead, then; we must get down out of this dark place. Don Abrahan will think I'm slower than seven doctors."

Henderson took up the pail to pour what water it contained over the dying fire. He was standing with it poised, held in both hands, when something came toward him with the swishing sound of a bird's wing from Simon's direction. Quick as the leaping of his intuitive warning that treachery was afoot behind him, Henderson stooped and sprang aside.

But Simon, with all the vaquero's cunning in casting the lariat, had planned his part too carefully, and risked too much, to fail. The rope fell true to calculation, tightening with Simon's vicious jerk, binding Henderson's arms to his body, one impotent hand within a few inches of his pistol. Simon threw all his sinewy strength into the struggle that followed, cutting Henderson's resistance short by dragging him to the ground. In a moment additional coils of rope webbed the overtrustful sailor, binding him hopelessly.

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 going forward. Now, when Simon had his prize securely tied and thrown on the ground, he stirred up the fire, added branches of dry cedar, and blew it to a blaze.

"So I, without a pistol on my body, take this smart Yankee and tie him like a hog," Simon boasted, great and arrogant satisfaction in his voice. He lifted his arms to display his body free of a belted pistol, and sat down near the fire, his back against a small tree.

"I'll remember this treachery, Simon, in the day that will come," Henderson said.

"The day that is coming for you is one when Roberto will cut you to pieces with his whip," Simon sneered. "Well, there is no hurry now. We will wait till daylight comes, then ride down the canyon. It would be foolish to arrive at midnight, for Don Abrahan would be asleep."

Simon smoked a while, legs stretched toward the fire, blowing smoke luxuriously, chin lifted high.

"What did I say to them when I left my pistol behind, all the foolish ones looking at me like men whose jaws were out of joint? I said, 'I need no pistol for this work. I am going to catch a Yankee, and that is not the same as a man.' When they see me come back with you, tied like a pig for sale in the plaza! Seven doctors, what a laugh!"


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IMON timed his arrival at the ranch for the theatrical effect that the simplest peon appreciates and introduces in the common transactions of life. It is this appreciation of the dramatic that makes political upheavals and armed revolutions so popular among the Mexican people, and from this very reason that so many of them turn out small and farcical affairs. The gravity of serious business seldom lies behind them; the passing sensation is sought, rather than the lasting effect.

It seemed that a fiesta must be going forward at Helena Sprague's place that morning. Although the sun was not yet up, and the morning was cool almost to chilliness, vestiges of the night fog still trailing across the hills, the working people of the ranch appeared to be all astir, together with the men who had come with Don Abrahan, all dressed in white shirts and holiday gear.

Some notable must have arrived, grander than Don Abrahan, Simon concluded, seeing a few green uniforms of soldiers mingled with the little crowd of household people. It was a firie setting for a man of valor to make his dramatic entrance, his prisoner bound to the back of the horse that he drove ahead of him.


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 Simon was puzzled, as he drew near the house, to account for the silence that lay upon the scene. There was none of the quick talk and merry laughter of a holiday. The children were quiet as they clustered around their mothers, their black heads sleek from the comb. Simon had leisure to note all this before so much as a dog discovered his approach.

The people of the ranch were so much taken up with this big thing that had happened, and given them a holiday, or was about to happen with the same profit to themselves, that they had neither eyes nor ears for the coming of one who, let other men in that house be as famous as they might, would take his place among the notables of that hour. So Simon told himself, secure in the belief of his own importance.

Henderson was greatly depressed as he rode in bonds ahead of his captor, his feet tied under the horse's belly, inglorious figure as man might well present. He had marked more than Simon, keen as the mule-driver's eyes, and that nothing less than military guards posted in the patio, and that the soldiers who mingled with the people carried guns.

It was due to the presence of these soldiers, Henderson believed, that all was so silent about the place. He wondered, above the discomfort of the rope that bound his hands, whether such an armed demonstration could have been made on his account. He dismissed the thought at once,


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 in the light of his present situation and the means to which he owed it.

"Soldiers!" said Simon, riding abreast of his prisoner, scorn in his expression. "They will do to scare women and children, but for a man's work it takes a man."

Simon lifted himself in the saddle, distended his chest, trained his mustaches back with crooked fingers. The people gathered in the open space behind the ranch house, upon one side of which the dwellings of the laborers faced, the barns and corrals the other, now began to show interest in the riders who came from the direction of the hills. They began to point, some ran excitedly from group to group, leaving the soldiers to themselves. By the time Simon and Henderson reached the gate in the fenced enclosure, willing hands were there to open to them, sparing the dignity of Simon.

Soldiers stopped them as they rode forward toward the patio. Henderson's concern for the safety of his friends grew so great that his own danger was all but forgotten. He did not know to what extent they were involved in the plotting to overthrow the Mexican government in California. Toberman had told him little of the matter, Helena scarcely more. They had seemed to be feeling him out without trusting him completely. He recalled Helena's disappointment when he convinced her that he was nothing more than he appeared, not what she had thought him to be—an


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 agent of the northern plotters working under this disguise.

Henderson had little time to pursue these disturbing thoughts. The sentry halted them within a few rods of the patio; through the windows Henderson could see people passing back and forth hurriedly.

"Call Don Abrahan," Simon commanded the soldier loftily.

The sentry turned to walk the length of his little beat, jerking hips and shoulders in the pride and contempt of his calling for a fellow who had nothing better to distinguish him than a pair of long mustaches and a captive foreigner tied about with a rope. His military ardor was so great that he kicked up a dust in his turning, marching away as if to dare Simon's courage with the unguarded line behind his back.

There was a movement of activity among the sentries in the patio—four of them Henderson counted, each apparently guarding a door—when an officer appeared issuing a rather lengthy order, no words of which Henderson could hear. Don Abrahan came to a door, his brown velvet garb somber in contrast with the green and gold of the offcer's uniform. For a moment Henderson saw Roberto's face at a window.

Two soldiers entered the room where Don Abrahan stood inside the door, their companions lined up on either side of the entrance. In a moment the two who had entered returned to the


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 patio, bringing John Toberman with them, a pris oner, hands bound at his back.

Roberto followed, with another officer whose rank must have been considerable, appraised by the grandeur of his uniform. The two soldiers who conducted Toberman fell in behind the least consequential of the officers, the prisoner between them, their comrades following. After the soldiers came Don Abrahan and the most important military officer of them all, in gold braid, the black plume of his hussar cap standing high.

"Seven doctors! They've got a general for every man!" said Simon.

Henderson was at once astonished and alarmed by this portentous procession. It must be that Toberman was under military arrest, on his way to the pueblo for trial. But in such case why all this solemn parade? Henderson felt his throat constrict, his lips grow dry as if a parching wind blew in his face. This proceeding had all the formality of a set and studied program, one often rehearsed by the military men who were conducting it. There was something irrevocably final about it, as of a concluded and determined case. John Toberman already had been judged and condemned. They were taking him out to die.

Henderson quivered with resentment of this brutal proceeding, unjustified as he believed it must be. That this view was held by the Mexicans and Indians who had been under Toberman's authority on the ranch was evident in the precaution


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 taken to awe them into submission. They were as powerless in the face of that small force of soldiers as himself, bound in humiliation with his pistol still strapped about him.

The small procession approached the line where the sentries held back the silent, submissive, sorrowful people from approaching the house. Toberman's head was bare, his thick, dark hair was in disorder. He evidently had not seen Henderson, absorbed as he was in this great affair which made the thought of other men and their troubles draw away and vanish, but now as he passed, only a few yards between them, he lifted his head.

Henderson marked, to remember all his years after, the baffled, perplexed, alniost incredible expression of Toberman's face. It was like that of a man who walked in a distracting dream, which he knew to be a dream, and blamed himself for the weakness that would not let him wake. It seemed that he did not credit the fact of his peril; that he did not believe these people whom it was his daily habit to override and despise, had come to their strength over him and were about to take away his life.

Henderson's amazing thought was that he must startle Toberman to a sense of his situation. If he could wake him out of that stunned dullness he might make a heroic effort, fling them down, bound as he was and escape.

"Toberman!" Henderson called, in the voice of one who rouses a sleeper; "Toberman!"


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 Toberman interpreted that wild hail as perfectly as the man who gave it. He swept a quick glance around the place, over the faces of the men who had come and gone all those years at his bidding, who, in the awe of this greater authority, would not lift a hand to save him now; looked down the far-spreading valley where the sun was rising redly out of the thinning fog, shook his head sadly, as if saying he knew that it was all a dream, but one out of which he would wake no more.

"Don Abrahan!" Henderson appealed, startling his horse into sudden bound by clamping its sides with his tied heels, "stop this thing, Don Abrahan! That man is an American, you can't"

A sentry sprang forward, menace in his uplifted piece; another caught the bridle, hurled the horse back, while Simon, roused out of his interest in the tragic pageant, drew hard on the rope that ran from his saddle-horn to the bit of Henderson's horse. Don Abrahan, not turning his eyes, not averting his fixed countenance, passed on as if he had not heard. In the dust that rose around him from his trampling horse, Henderson saw Simon leering at him dark threats.

"You are an American, also, and see where you are!" Simon said. "In a second I'll make a hole in you that the bees can fly through, you Yankee peddler out of a ship!"

They were placing Toberman with his back against the adobe wall of the sheep corral, afraid


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 of him to the end, denying him the grace of dying with hands unbound. The officer of the squad advanced, a handkerchief in his hand, offering to cover the condemned man's eyes, not knowing that one who had sailed the seas so long, and looked familiarly on death so many times, would scorn to have its approach hidden from him now. Henderson could not hear his words, but he saw him draw himself up valiantly, and the officer stand back. The sun was yellow on the adobe wall above Toberman's head when he fell.

An overpowering rage swept Henderson, hot as aflame. He strained to lift his bound body in the saddle, to raise his bound arms in his denunciation.

"You damned cowards!" he shouted, voice vibrant with passion. "You damned, infernal cowards!"

There must have been something in the timbre of Henderson's voice that carried the realization to the very hearts of the men who had encompassed that deed that a delegate from a stronger race was among them; that they had heard the voice of vengeance from a source of authority. Even if they did not understand the words, the soldiers who had fired into Toberman's body felt the thought that they conveyed. They turned, their smoking weapons clutched, as if the tramp of cavalry had struck upon their ears.

Don Abrahan wheeled, shocked out of his studied dignity. The gilded and braided general in the plumed cap turned to look at this man who


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 had sounded denunciation in the voice of judgment.

The smoke of the guns stood heavy between Henderson and the adobe wall. He could see Toberman's white shirt, his body stretched full-length where he had fallen on his face. The general spoke to Don Abrahan, looking again toward Henderson. They conferred together, as if considering some stroke of punishment fitting to the affront.

The officer in command of the firing squad gave a harsh command to the shrinking ranch laborers, who had been compelled to assemble and witness the degradation and death of the man whom they had respected and obeyed, some of them all their lives. A few went forward with reluctant feet, lifted Toberman's body and bore it away.

Henderson was careless of all consequences to himself, superior to the helplessness of his present state. The weariness of lying all night in ropes under Simon's unfeeling eyes was forgotten, the pain and stiffness dissolved out of his muscles and was gone. When Don Abrahan and the military commander approached, he leaned in the saddle, straining on his bonds.

"Don Abrahan Garvanza, you have done a cowardly and atrocious thing!" he charged.

Don Abrahan stopped, looking Henderson sternly in the eyes, gazing long, as if sounding him for the courage and manhood that lay within.

"So a traitor has died, so traitors must die," Don Abrahan said.


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 "The curs that have murdered him shall answer to the United States government," Henderson declared, as positively as if the power lay in his own hands.

"The United States government will be on its knees before Santana in a few weeks, my good Gabriel. Haven't the traitors with whom you have associated since you left the shelter of my house told you this? There is war, Gabriel; the United States forces have been defeated on every hand; they fly, Santana's victorious troops pursue them to the shadow of Washington itself. Who, then, is there left to bring this terrible retribution you threaten, my little son?"

"There is one, at least, if no more," Henderson replied.

"That might be yourself, then, my fine Gabriel?"

"Even myself, Don Abrahan."

Henderson's voice was steady when he took upon himself that obligation of retribution for the deed he had witnessed in the pain of his helplessness but a few moments past. It was so firm, and so deep in its gravity, that the braided general—and he was of no less rank, though his forces numbered but forty men—at Don Abrahan's side looked at the speaker, his eyes drawn as if to pierce him to the marrow. Perhaps he sounded deeper than Don Abrahan, and found the man.

Not so Roberto, who had come up from his conversation with the other officer to stand beside his


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 father. He jerked his shoulder, his nostrils twitched in a sneer, a smile parted his heavy, petulant lips.

"A man must be valiant and vigorous for such an undertaking, Gabriel," Don Abrahan said with sinister gentleness, that light of laughter that was not yet a laugh lying deep in his eyes. "There is a process for hardening a man for a task like that, of testing the sufficiency of his fortitude and valor. We shall come to this. Simon, you have done well; you shall have your reward. Take the ropes from this pig that you have brought me."

Simon, who had disdained to set foot on the ground until this moment, flung himself from the saddle and set about undoing the rope that bound Henderson's feet.

"Soldiers!" Simon scoffed, bending at his task; "five of them to kill one old Yankee! And I, myself, have caught a better one, with not even the shadow of a pistol at my side."

"You have done well," Don Abrahan assured him. "Santana's army has no braver man."

Henderson's legs were stiff; he staggered when he came to the ground. Don Abrahan looked at him critically, that reflection of inner laughter deepening in his eyes.

"General, permit me the services of two soldiers with strong arms," he requested. "There is too much insolent blood in this young man; some of it must be let out through the skin of his back."

"With great pleasure, Don Abrahan," the gen-


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 eral granted, in unmistakable endorsement of the program.

"There was a compact," said Roberto, stepping forward, addressing his father. "You will recall that certain matters in the business of this runaway peon were to be left in my hands."

"Your pardon, my son. That is so. Gabriel, you will see that I am a beneficent man. I forego your deserved chastisement and deliver you to the merciful hands of Don Roberto, your master from this moment. Let us go to breakfast, General Verdugo. I trust your appetite is keen."


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ON ABRAHAN'S father had built that house as the houses of men of consequence in his native country, who had daughters and dignities to guard and cherish, had built theirs since time of old. Daughters and the dignity of houses too often fall together, especially in a country where men are not to be trusted alone with women, except where bars divide them. Don Abrahan's father had set strong bars into the oak sills of the windows opening upon the patio, perhaps not so much in the belief that the women of his household were weak, as in his knowledge that the men of his nation were vile.

Don Abrahan's sisters had watched the moon through these bars; his daughters had sent their longings winging away to lovers' hearts between them. Helena Sprague, prisoner in the republic's name, under charge of a heavy crime, occupied an apartment looking upon this patio, into which many ladies had sighed.

In her room there were two windows in a little projecting balcony, a sort of stage box for witnessing the drama of adoration, somewhat higher from the ground than a tall cavalier's head. A lady might reach down her hand to be kissed by one on


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 the outside, but her lips must remain unkissed behind the bars.

Doña Carlota occupied the adjoining room, a connecting door between, the key to which she was careful to keep close, fearful of Don Abrahan's wrath if Helena should chance to lock her out and pass an hour free from her espionage. Helena had spared her the fire and anger of her scorn for the betrayal of Henderson, which had resulted in the visitation of Don Abrahan and the attendant tragedies. Yet Helena's cold, white silence was more terrible to Doña Carlota's fleshy bosom than any torrent of words. In words one had it over, soon to forget; in silence such as this girl's there was a constant threat.

Almost immediately after the military execution of John Toberman, which Helena's pleadings had been unavailing to stay for an hour, Don Abrahan had given orders for Helena's removal to his own house. The journey had been made by carriage, under guard of soldiers, pushed rapidly, without regard for Doña Carlota's bulk, or her protestations that her bones would be broken before the descent of the pass was so much as begun.

They had arrived at Don Abrahan's house in the middle of the afternoon. Now the sun was gone from the patio, the canyons were filling with the blue haze of evening. Since her arrival Helena had not moved from the place where she sat before the window, gazing at the stern, gray hills.

She seemed a prisoner without hope, Doña Car-


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 lota thought, smiling comfortably and knowingly to herself. Youth did not understand that discipline, to be effective, to result in healthful regeneration, must inflict its pain. And this was only discipline, applied for the purpose of setting Helena's feet in the way of their duty again. Don Abrahan had told her that.

Through the connecting doorway Doña Carlota looked at the girl, her smile fat as a Benedictine friar's, a certain softness of affection in her eyes. Doña Carlota caressed the tidy slenderness of Helena's body with her affectionate glance, as if she had a half-formed notion of going over and caressing the long braid of hair that swung like a lissom vine down her back, swaying when she moved restlessly from time to time, her hand on the window-sill. That was a strong hand for a girl, Doña Carlota thought, one with the power of the Yankee captain in it, one that might well open the casement and tear out the restraining bars.

Helena was paler than youth should be, thought Doña Carlota. A little color out of a box spread artfully on the cheeks, a little darkening under the eyes in the cunning way the girls of her own youth knew so well to enhance the wistfulness of those bright gems. Yet, without the color Helena was pleasant to the eye, warm-feeling to look upon, a sense of satisfaction in the complete fineness of her face and form.

Helena was linda. There is no English word exactly for linda, which is more than pretty, not yet


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 to say beautiful; wholesome, clean, perhaps we might say, or even fresh, or fair, but all inadequate in approach to the fine shading of that little word. A girl that did not set men mad, Doña Carlota said, but one that drew their respect and held them at the distance that men belong. From a slip, as one sees a vine grow, Doña Carlota had seen this girl struggle out of childhood and mount strong upon the trellis of life. Much like a vine, indeed, thought Doña Carlota, that ong sets in love beside the door.

Now the vine had come to blossom in the fresh, fragrant beauty of its young strength. And everybody knew, Doña Carlota said, that a vine standing alone did not come to bear the best fruit. No; there must be at least two vines, close side by side in the blossom-time to make the fruit perfect, full and sweet. Why it was so, Doña Carlota did not know, being neither a botanist nor a biologist. But that it was an eternal truth, she knew as well as the wisest.

Don Abrahan was calling outside her door. She put down her pleasant speculations, turning to answer. What a man Don Abrahan was! what impatience with a woman in his way of calling at her door! Here he must come with his business to break in and disturb her just when she was regaining her tranquillity and getting back her breath from that terrific journey through the pass.

"Don Abrahan waits your attendance," Doña Carlota announced, returning to Helena's door.


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 "I am weary of Don Abrahan's importunities," Helena said. Tell him that."

"I will carry no such word to Don Abrahan!" Doña Carlota returned.

"Let him wait, then."

Doña Carlota came back with all the haste she could impose on her fat legs, with all the severity she could summon out of her colorless soul.

"Aga magistrate, Don Abrahan commands your attendance," she said. "He trusts, for the dignity of this house, that it will not be necessary to say more. Will you see me humbled, called like a servant"

Helena seemed to push the words back into her aunt's mouth with the impatient sweep of her hand as she rose to obey the magistrate's summons. She stood a moment to look again out of the window as if to take farewell of a familiar and well-loved scene. When she passed slowly out of the room, head bent as if she walked under a heavy penance, Doña Carlota hastened to the window to see for herself what there might be in that fascinating landscape to hold a girl's eyes and make them reluctant to turn away.

There was the yellow road at the head of the lane of olive trees, where it curved eastward to strike the pass into the valley which they had left but a few hours since. There was bitterness, and there was scorn in Doña Carlota's voice as she spoke, beating her finger-ends against the small thick window-pane.


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 "It is the baseness that is in her blood that turns her eyes to watch for him, the Yankee sailor out of a dirty ship! Would to God Don Abrahan had stood him against the wall this morning along with the other one!"

Don Abrahan was alone in his office; he rose, bowing in his slow-bending, gravely courteous way, seeming to offer Helena the house and all it contained by the grand sweep of his hand when presenting her a chair. She stood, hand on the chair, as if she questioned his purpose in commanding her, and had but a moment to remain for his reply. She was pale and harried by the anguishing recollection of that morning's cruel deed, strained by an oppressive anxiety for the future, but not her own.

"If you will be seated, my child," Don Abrahan seemed to implore, so great his deference. "There may be much to say."

Don Abrahan took up certain papers from many on the table, holding them in his hand like a master about to hear his pupil recite. He sat so a little while, a cloud coming over his face, playing, as he knew well from his heritage of a thousand years of cruel men how to play, upon her suspense and fear.

"There is a matter that I would approach without giving you pain," he said. "Yet I am afraid you will misinterpret my motive, and my tongue halts."

"Does it concern the young stranger, Mr. Hen-


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 derson?" Helena inquired, lifting her eyes suddenly. "Have you murdered him, too?"

"I did not intend to speak of the sailor—a trifle, a thing of no consequence."

"Since you have spoken, Don Abrahan, tell me where he is, what you are going to do with him. He was under my poor protection. I have a right to know how far my hospitality has been shamed by the armed tyrants who invaded my home."

"He is not dead; no man holds him in such account as to want his life, as far as I know. It is not the custom to honor peones who desert their masters by so much as hanging them. You understand the country's customs—you are no alien here."

"What have you done withhim? I have a right to know."

"He will be brought here today, to take up his labors again," Don Abrahan answered shortly. "Now, for this matter that I called you here to confer upon."

Don Abrahan lapsed away again into that suspended introspective pause. So the master of the torture paused in the melancholy chamber of the inquisition, calculating the utmost strain the tendons of his stretched victim could bear without snapping. The same greedy glint must have shone in his eyes as enlivened Don Abrahan's that moment, watching the young woman at the end of his great oak table over the paper's edge.

Helena sat with hands loosely clasped in her lap.


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 Strong hands, large for a woman, Don Abrahan made note; hands that might drive a dagger into a man's heart. Her head was bent slightly. If her heart went faster for any threat in Don Abrahan's manner, her face did not reveal it. Don Abrahan watched the thin nostrils for a betraying tremor, the calm forehead for the drawing of the brows. She remained as placid outwardly as unshaken water.

"The fact of your disloyal conduct to your country has not been published yet, Helena," Don Abrahan resumed. "Fortunately, it was not necessary to reveal to the military authorities anything that implicated or involved you in order to secure the conviction of Toberman, renegade traitor, thing of the vilest!"

"He was not a traitor," Helena denied, flashing under the charge against her dead friend, surprising Don Abrahan mightily. He had looked to see her subdued to a woman's place by this. "All he worked for, all I helped him in, was for peaceful annexation to the United States."

"It is treason, even in time of peace," Don Abrahan corrected her, magisterial, severe. "Put a guard on your tongue, Helena. Such speech in the hearing of others would lead to something that I might not be able to stop."

"It was a savage deed of personal vengeance, Don Abrahan, against a man you would not have dared to face," she said.

"We will not open again what we have discussed


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 and closed," Don Abrahan returned, harsh, final, almost savage.

"How will you answer when the strong friends of that murdered man demand an accounting of you?"

"It is folly to speak of such things, Helena. The Americans never can overcome Mexico, they are of inferior breed, their valor is in their heels. If you look forward to such a day for your own deliverance your heart will die. Your deliverer is before you; I call you here to offer you a door to liberty, to life. Do not provoke me to close it in your face."

"I believe it is a custom with you, Don Abrahan, to sell your beneficence at a price. What am I expected to pay?"

"Nothing is wanted from you, Helena, nothing is asked—but justice. There is no price, but there is such a thing as recompense."

"If you can name a wrong," she said, in the conviction of innocence.

"We shall come to that. As I have said, the fact of your treason, even of your arrest, has not been officially proclaimed. No notice of seizure has been posted on your house and lands; your effects are guarded by men whom I trust. This written evidence, sufficient, I am afraid, to bring you long imprisonment, if not death, is known only to me and my son. With it removed, with no witness to come forward to disclose what it contained, the case against you will fall."


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 Don Abrahan paused, eyes fixed on the warehouse across the dusty courtyard. A little while so; then he shook the paper in his hand as if to rouse himself from wandering after unprofitable things—perhaps justice and mercy were among them—tossed it from him, took up another.

"And I am certain you are coming to the price I am to pay to bring this happy end around," Helena said.

Don Abrahan was a keen man; the scorn of hee voice was not lost on him. Likewise he was a hard man, upon whom sarcasm could not make a scar.

"There is such a thing as recompense for a loss," he said, with the tentative suggestion of a bribe-seeker. "My son was to marry you. Through your refusal to carry out the contract, he loses your lands and property. I have drawn a deed, antedating this crisis in your affairs. It is one little paper balancing another, Helena. For the deed I give you this. My memory is erased; the foul crime of treason will not stand against your name."

Don Abrahan had come to it, and come to it boldly. Now that he had no further need of playing with words to lead up to his purpose in his way of ancient diplomacy, he could be as blunt as any Yankee captain that ever sailed the seas. He looked Helena straight in the eyes, his hard, thin face unsympathetic as bone.

"So the case stands," he said.

"I have heard it," she replied.


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 "It will be a sale for a consideration, and what consideration, indeed, is more precious to youth than life?"

"Life with honor is a precious thing, Don Abrahan. But what of General Verdugo, a greedy, unscrupulous man? What of the soldiers who rode here guarding me? Who is going to hush them and keep them still?"

"There will be no evidence—rumors are not evidence. Besides, I will send you safely out of the country. There is a British warship in the harbor now; you can pass for an American woman fleeing the dangers of the country with which your own is at war."

"I could, without much pretense," she agreed with peculiar stress. "But I am not going to sign over my property to you, Don Abrahan. You would not dare bring a charge of treason against me, a not so very far distant relation. Do you suppose the attainder could dishonor me, my name, and leave your own unclouded? No. I will not sign the deed, Don Abrahan; I will not give up my home, and all that I hold dear, to you."

"There is no other way to escape the penalty; all other doors are locked. You have the memory of Toberman fresh. The same fate threatens you; it is so near its breath moves your hair."

"I will not sign the deed, Don Abrahan."

"As God judges between us, Helena, there is no other way. General Verdugo knows enough that I must silence him at a heavy price. I would not tell


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 you this, but your obstinate blindness wrings it from my heart."

"Let the thieves fall out, then. Maybe the innocent will profit by it."

"Innocent!" he repeated, bitterly discounting the word. "You plot to sell your country for a price"

"Of liberty to all men," she said.

"Liberty! These sweat-sour peones would get drunk on liberty; they would cut all our throats in a week."

"They would pay as they have been paid. It is the nature of man."

"And if you do not sign, Miss," Don Abrahan struck the table with the folded deed to solemnize his words, "by the sacred blood, you will be shot, as Toberman was shot!"

"I'll never sign it, Don Abrahan."

"Consider it in the night, when the terror of death comes to a man in its blackest form," he counseled. "I will give you until morning. Beyond that I cannot protect you; the matter will have passed out of my hands. Verdugo is threatening. He is a wolf; there is no mercy in his breast. He has smelled your gold, and it is like blood to a lion."

"You are all base, all cowards," she said, rising with her denunciation. "Don Abrahan Garvanza, when the United States soldiers step ashore from their ships you will meet men, such men as you heard this morning denounce you, challenge and


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 defy you, in his bonds. You will feel this country tip toward the sea beneath their weight. Shoot me if your greed demands the sacrifice, but consider how you will answer the United States soldiers when they come marching to your door."

Helena left him. Don Abrahan, his hands cold in something that was not all rage, stood gaunt and hollow, his brown clothing loose upon his limbs, looking hard at the door through which she passed.


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ELENA, watching at her window as day grew faint on the hills, saw a small cavalcade arrive at the turn of the road beyond the olive lane, bringing Gabriel Henderson a prisoner to the ranch. One rider came before him, one on either hand, and Roberto himself, with pistols in his belt, closed the road behind. Henderson's hands were bound at his back.

Helena had only a brief sight of the prisoner as the dusty riders came sweeping at a lively trot down the road and turned into the lane. She knew the torture of the long ride with hands bound behind him must have been a great trial on the sailor's endurance, but he seemed fresh and strong, and sat as erect in his saddle as Roberto himself. She knew well that his unbroken spirit still looked bravely out of his laughing eyes.

"The servant will bring our supper to these rooms; that is the direction of Don Abrahan," Doña Carlota opened the door to announce.

"You may have my share of Don Abrahan's bounty, Aunt Carlota," Helena said, her white face close to the window bars, the sash open to admit the cool, scented evening wind.

"You must eat, my child. How long? Why,


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 it has been since yesterday that you have not eaten! You will die famished—it is a mortal sin to starve one's self to death."

"I have no heart for food, Aunt Carlota," Helena sighed.

"Three days is as long as any Christian being can live without eating, and it is now more than one. You must eat, my little dove."

"I have a banquet of bitter herbs tonight. I shall not die of hunger."

"You should not be bitter in your heart toward Don Abrahan, my sweet pigeon. What Don Abrahan proposes is only a subterfuge to save your property; in the end he will give it back to you again. Don Abrahan has told me this with his own mouth."

"Don Abrahan has been more generous to you than he has been to me."

"He is a good man, Helena; a kind and gentle man. 'Pray for me, Doña Carlota,' he requested me not an hour ago."

"Eat your supper first, then, Auntie Carlota. You will need great strength and endurance for that task."

"You must not scoff at prayers," Doña Carlota rebuked her.

"Not I."

Helena was standing before the window, the long leaves of which opened into the room. Her hands were white on the bars where she grasped them as if to draw herself to the window-ledge.


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 Doña Carlota leaned forward to study her sharply in the fast-falling gloom.

"You will not eat?" she asked.

"No. Please close the door when you begin. I only want to be alone."

"You would not run away?"

"Yes, if I could. If I had an ax I'd break down these bars. Yes. Perhaps you'd better tell that to Don Abrahan."

"I tell Don Abrahan? Don Abrahan hears nothing from me!"

"While you are praying, Aunt Carlota, say several for yourself."

"He hears only what is for your good," Doña Carlota amended for the benefit of her own conscience, mumbling it as she closed the door. She closed it noisily, to show her displeasure, then opened it softly wide enough to admit a feather or a sound.

Doña Carlota fell asleep after her heavy supper, a tall, fresh candle on the table at her side, her feet short of the floor as she lay back in the great armchair which Don Abrahan had provided for her comfort. But she had locked the door leading into the patio, and was sitting on the key. Helena knew her habit in the way of keys. As well try to beat down the door of two-inch oak with her bare hands as to remove Doña Carlota from the key without waking her, sluggish as her slumber was, raucous as her snore.

Helena returned to her own dark room from a


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 hopeless little hope that Doña Carlota might have forgotten the key, to close her window against the chill of night. Her own name came to her, pronounced in questioning accent of appeal, little louder than a sigh.

"Who calls?" she asked, her face close to the bars.

"It is I, Roberto."

"Oh, Roberto," she said, the strong leap of her heart falling low, the quick fire of a great new hope sinking again in despair. Roberto! Who but Roberto would be free to come, indeed!

"Come close, Helena; my words are for your ear alone."

"I am near, Roberto."

But she had drawn away at the sound of his name, unconsciously, perhaps, with the recession of her hope. Who was there but Roberto to come, indeed?

"Doña Carlota must not hear, Helena."

"She is asleep; the door is closed between us. Why do you come in this secret manner, Roberto? What do you want to tell me?"

She heard his breath near, and the soft exploration of his hands upon the bars. The great pepper tree was dark behind him, the moon was not yet up. She could see him dimly, head and shoulders above the window-sill.

"There, I am up," Roberto panted. "I am standing on Don Felipe's stool out of his office."

"And whose ambassador are you now?" she


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 asked, prepared for some new piece of subtlety and deceit.

"My own. I have heard of your refusal to sign away your estate, Helena. I applaud your resolution. But you cannot stand before the forces that will be brought against you tomorrow, Helena. You must either yield to my father's desire in the matter, or suffer a thing that my dread will not let me name."

"And you have come to counsel me to sign away all that is mine to save you from the thought of this terrible word, Roberto?"

"I have come to offer you freedom," Roberto whispered, his words hot in their eagerness, it seemed, his face pressed close to the bars. She felt his breath on her hand.

"What is your price, then, Roberto?"

There was not even sarcasm in her tone; only the low note of one who had spent her illusions, and had no more interest in man's devices of lure and deceit.

"Price? It is I who will pay the price, it is I who will fling everything away for you! Do you not know the voice of love, Helena?"

"I have heard it so seldom, Roberto," she replied softly, in sorrow. She touched his hand, seen dimly white on the window-bar. "Forgive me, Roberto. I did not know."

"They will have your property whether you go or stay, Helena, my father and General Verdugo, between them. There is only a little time—quick!


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 The bars are not so strong, the wood can be broken, the adobe can be torn out beneath the sill on this side."

"But what, Roberto, what then?" she asked, bewildered by his impetuosity, his apparent sincerity in whatever it was he devised.

"To the priest and be married, and then—what God wills!"

"There have been so many deceits," she said, turning many considerations in her thoughts, but not among them that of paying Roberto's price for the doubtful liberty that he offered.

"There is no deceit, Helena. I will fling everything away, I will"

"What is there for you to throw away, Roberto?" she asked, impatient of what seemed a hollow protestation.

"My father's friendship, my inheritance—all!"

"No; that is too much, Roberto."

"It is nothing."

"You might be sorry tomorrow, getting so little for so much."

"I have loved you long," he said, with such simple sincerity that touched her heart. "I have come to you now to redeem all that is past. I ask you to believe me—only that."

"But tomorrow, and the days after? Roberto, you know that I am called a traitor. I am under the shadow of death."

"My love absolves you."


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 "But you could not save me if they determined to have my life."

"We will go to the north, Helena, among your friends. In Sonoma the Americans have already raised a flag—do you know of this?"

"A flag? the American"

"Of the Republic of California."

"That will not do," she said, disappointed in the news. "California cannot stand as a republic."

"But the Americans will come; I am not deceived as my father is, Helena. I know they will come."

"Yes, they will come, Roberto."

"And all men may look for justice with good reason then. Your lands will be returned to you; mine, perhaps. Who knows?"

"Who knows?" she echoed.

"Doña Carlota wakes?" he whispered, straining against the bars, something in her tone that startled him.

"She sleeps on."

"We must hasten. You will come?"

"If I knew, if I knew, Roberto!"

"If you knew, my desired?"

"That you loved me—oh, Roberto! so much better than enough!"

"I'll prove to you by the devotion of my life"

"But now," she insisted, "but now. How am I to know this moment if you love me even well enough?"


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 "I would kill a man to prove how well I love you!"

"Roberto, but would you give one life?"

"A thousand lives if they were in my power."

"Just one, and I will do all that you desire. Roberto"—her hand found his again, she nestled on the deep window-sill close to him—"if you will let Gabriel Henderson go free, if you will see that he reaches Monterey in safety, that is all I ask."

"You ask this of me?" Roberto spoke quickly, eagerly, she thought.

"I ask it of you, Roberto. He will find a way from Monterey to go back to his people, his home."

"And if this is granted?"

"The moment he sends me word that he is safe among friends in Monterey, I swear I will do all that you desire."

"So—yes—your hand, your hand!"

Roberto spoke quickly, in the incoherence of a strong and sudden resolution, the excitement of it thrilling in his tone. She felt his hand groping between the bars, caught his wrist, laid her own hand in the grasp of his ardent fingers.

"You love him too much!" said Roberto, drawing her suddenly against the bars. "By the sacred blood, you die!"

Helena struggled hard against him, knowing his purpose was to draw her down within his dagger's reach.

"Roberto! I will alarm the house!"


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 "By the sacred blood!"

Helena's free hand grasped a bar as Roberto's dagger clashed on the iron. She threw herself back, breaking free from his vengeful embrace. His weapon struck the floor with a sharp clatter as he clutched to save himself a fall.

"Who is it?" Doña Carlota demanded, her voice thick with sleep, shaken in terrific fright.

"I am closing the window, Aunt Carlota," Helena answered, in calm, assuring tone.


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ABRIEL HENDERSON often had speculated on the purpose of that barred embrasure high in the side of the warehouse wall. It was little more than a slit in the blank face of the ugly brown adobe, perhaps eight or nine inches deep and twice as wide. Heavy oak sills held the strong bars securely; a strong oak plank inside them closed the slight vent, or whatever it was designed to be.

The place must be the repository of something of extraordinary value, he had supposed. In all his duties about the warehouse, none of them ever had brought him into the room of this barred window. He often thought of inquiring of Don Felipe the purpose of it. Now he had been enlightened without inquiry.

It was the cell of Don Abrahan's private prison, the penitential place where the wills of strong men who rose at times in defiance of the patron's authority were broken. And if not their spirits, then their bodies. Don Abrahan's father had built it, and employed it in his day. Many a man's life had gone out in the torture of starvation and thirst within those thick, brown walls, the heavy plank locked at the barred slit to sequester even his dying groan.


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 Don Felipe had come with the key to open this prison at his young master's command, and there they had left Henderson, hands bound as they had taken him from the horse. Felipe had the consideration to command Simon, whose reach was long, to unlock the slab that closed the slit of window and admit a breath of new air. In the little light left of that sad day, Henderson was able presently to see the space that contained him.

The cell was about eight feet long and half as wide, the ceiling at least twice the height of Henderson's body above his head. The floor was earth; there was not even a straw in the place to contribute to the comfort of one whose misfortunes brought him within the embrace of its high, blank walls.

Henderson's arms pained him cruelly, for Roberto had ordered his ropes drawn hard that morning after they had freed his hands for a little while to let him eat and drink. Since then he had not been refreshed. He was suffering from thirst, which asserted itself above the turmoil of his thoughts, although hunger had no place in the anxiety of his situation. John Toberman's fate stood before him as a forecast of his own.

Long after nightfall Simon came, bringing a candle and food. He released Henderson's hands, laughing over his numbed efforts to lift the pitcher of water to his lips, offering no assistance. Compassion was not in him, nor his kind. Simon stood with his back to the door while Henderson chafed


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 his hands, much diverted to see that the congested blood had distended and burst the sailor's seahardened skin.

"Fat," Simon directed. "Don't sit here all night rubbing your hands like an old woman over a charcoal pot. A man has to get to his bed. I wouldn't have brought you so much as a bean if Don Roberto hadn't given sharp orders to feed you well. He wants you to have strength for tomorrow. A man suffers more if he is strong. Eat, curse you in the seven places!"

Simon opened the door to kick through a heap of straw when he saw the prisoner engage himself with the earthen pot of beans.

"Here, Don Gabriel," he said in mockery, "here comes your bed. It is more than many a poor peon has this night to lay his bones on—sweet straw that has not been even picked over by the mules. Well, Don Roberto is kinder to you than I would be—kinder than Santana is to the Yankees he catches along the Rio Grande. They say he burns them, fat scoundrels that they are, to light his camp at night."

Henderson did not grant Simon the satisfaction of so much as a word, although he contrasted the fellow's present ferocity with the friendliness of the past, thinking how quickly tyranny will grow into a rank, foul thing from a so insignificant seed. Simon closed the door after shutting an inner grated barrier that swung back against the wall, then opened it again, candle in hand, as if to re-


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 fresh himself by the sight of the chequered shadows on the prison floor.

"Don Roberto has made me your keeper, in due reward for my bravery in catching you alone, with only my naked arm," he said. "Sleep, then, Don Gabriel, Don Marinero, Don Yankee, happy to know that you are watched over by a man who is as strong and as vigilant as an angel. An ant could not pass me where I lie outside your door. And tomorrow, tomorrow!"

Simon made his appearance early next morning, bringing a plentiful breakfast. He did not stay to gossip, or to take away the few dishes. He was bristling with excitement as he pushed the board upon which he had carried the breakfast from the kitchen beneath the inner barred door.

"There is the devil to pay around this place today," he said. He locked the thick oak door and hurried off. Henderson heard him running through the empty room beyond.

Henderson had noted an unusual commotion around the patron's dwelling for that early hour. Horses had been ridden into the courtyard, where they stood stamping off the flies which clustered on their legs. After a time they had been ridden out again, rapidly. There had been much passing to and from between the patron's mansion and the direction of Don Felipe's office, the stables, the houses of the laborers on the estate; much talking when men met and paused, voices pitched in the undertone of guarded excitement.