“How do you do, Pablo?” she said.  “Have you forgotten me?  I’m the girl to whom you were kind enough to give a ride on Panchito one day in El Toro.”

The glowering glance of suspicion and resentment faded slowly from old Pablo’s swarthy countenance.  He scrambled to his feet and swept the ground with his old straw sombrero,

“I am at the service of the senorita,” he replied, gravely.

“Thank you, Pablo.  I just wanted to tell you that you need not carry that rifle any more.  I shall see to it that you are not removed from the ranch.”

He stared at her with stolid interest.

“Muchas gracias, senorita,” he mumbled.  Then, remembering she did not understand Spanish, he resumed in English:  “I am an old man, mees.  Since my two boss he’s die, pretty soon Pablo die, too.  For what use eet is for live now I don’ tell you.  Those ol’ man who speak me leave theese rancho—­he is your father, no?”

“Yes, Pablo.  And he isn’t such a terrible man, once you get acquainted with him.”

“I don’ like,” Pablo muttered frankly.  “He have eye like lookin’-glass.  Mebbeso for you, mees, eet is different, but for Pablo Artelan—­” he shrugged.  “Eef Don Mike is here, nobody can talk to me like dose ol’ man, your father, he speak to me.”  And he wagged his head sorrowfully.

Kay came close to him.

“Listen, Pablo:  I have a secret for you.  You, must not tell anybody.  Don Mike is not dead.”

He raised his old head with languid interest and nodded comprehension.

“My wife, Carolina, she tell me same thing all time.  She say:  ’Pablo mio, somebody make beeg mistake.  Don Mike come home pretty queeck, you see.  Nobody can keel Don Mike.  Nobody have that mean the deesposition for keel the boy.’  But I don’ theenk Don Mike come back to El Palomar.”

“Carolina is right, Pablo.  Somebody did make a big mistake.  He was wounded in the hand, but not killed.  I saw him to-day, Pablo, on the train.”

“You see Don Mike?  You see heem with the eye?”

“Yes.  And he spoke to me with the tongue.  He will arrive here in an hour.”

Pablo was on his knees before her, groping for her hand.  Finding it, he carried it to his lips.  Then, leaping to his feet with an alacrity that belied his years, he yelled: 

“Carolina!  Come queeck, Pronto! Aqui, Carolina.”

“Si, Pablo mio.”

Carolina appeared in the doorway and was literally deluged with a stream of Spanish.  She stood there, hands clasped on her tremendous bosom, staring unbelievingly at the bearer of these tidings of great joy, the while tears cascaded down her flat, homely face.  With a snap of his fingers, Pablo dismissed her; then he darted into the house and emerged with his rifle.  A cockerel, with the carelessness of youth, had selected for his roost the limb of an adjacent oak and was still gazing about him instead of secreting his head under his wing, as cockerels should at sunset.  Pablo neatly shot his head off, seized the fluttering carcass, and started plucking out the feathers with neatness and despatch.