“I move we make it unanimous,” Parker suggested, and gripped Don Mike’s hand.

“Fine,” Don Mike cried happily.  He was no longer the least bit Castilian; he was all Gaelic-American.  “Please clear out and let me have air,” he pleaded, and fled from the room.  In the garden he met Kay, and without an instant’s hesitation took her by the arm and led her over to the sweet lime tree.

“Kay,” he began, “on such a moonlit night as this, on this same spot, my father asked my mother to marry him.  Kay, dear, I love you.  I always shall, I have never been in love before and I shall never be in love again.  There’s just enough Celt in me to make me a one-girl man, and since that day on the train when you cut my roast beef because my hand was crippled, you’ve been the one girl in the world for me.  Until to-day, however, I did not have the right to tell you this and to ask you, as I now do, if you love me enough to marry me; if you think you could manage to live with me here most of the time—­after I’ve restored the old place somewhat.  Will you marry me, Kay—­ah, you will, you will!”

She was in his arms, her flower face upturned to his for his first kiss.

They were married in the quaint, old-world chapel of the now restored Mission de la Madre Dolorosa by Father Dominic, and in accordance with ancient custom, revived for the last time, the master of Palomar gave his long-delayed fiesta and barbecue, and the rich and the poor, honest men and wastrels, the gente and the peons of San Marcos County came to dance at his wedding.

Their wedding night Don Mike and his bride spent, unattended save for Pablo and Carolina, in the home of his ancestors.  It was still daylight when they found themselves speeding the last departing wedding guest; hand in hand they seated themselves on the old bench under the catalpa tree and gazed down into the valley.  There fell between them the old sweet silence that comes when hearts are too filled with happiness to find expression in words.  From the Mission de la Madre Dolorosa there floated up to them the mellow music of the Angelus; the hills far to the west were still alight on their crests, although the shadows were long in the valley, and Don Mike, gazing down on his kingdom regained, felt his heart filled to overflowing.

His wife interrupted his meditations.  He was to learn later that this is a habit of all wives.

“Miguel, dear, what are you thinking about?”

“I cannot take time to tell you now, Kay, because my thoughts, if transmuted into print, would fill a book.  Mostly, however, I have been thinking how happy and fortunate I am, and how much I love you and that—­yonder.  And when I look at it I am reminded that but for you it would not be mine.  Mine?  I loathe the word.  From this day forward—­ours!  I have had the ranch homesteaded, little wife.  It belongs to us both now.  I owed you so much that I could