“Let’s go,” she suggested, “while mother is still convoying Mr. Okada.  He is still interested in that sweet-lime tree.  By the way,” she continued, as they rose and walked down the porch together, “I have never heard of a sweet-lime before.”

“It’s the only one of its kind in this country, Miss Parker, and it is very old.  Just before it came into bearing for the first time, my grandmother, while walking along the porch with a pan of sugar in her hands, stubbed her toe and fell off the porch, spilling her pan of sugar at the base of the tree.  The result of this accident is noticeable in the fruit to this very day.”

She glanced up at him suspiciously, but not even the shadow of a smile hovered on his grave features.  He opened the rear gate for her and they passed out into the compound.

“That open fireplace in the adobe wall under the shed yonder was where the cowboys used to sit and dry themselves after a rainy day on the range,” he informed her.  “In fact, this compound was reserved for the help.  Here they held their bailies in the old days.”

“What is that little building yonder—­that lean-to against the main adobe wall?” Kay demanded.

“That was the settlement-room.  You must know that the possessors of dark blood seldom settle a dispute by argument, Miss Parker.  In days gone by, whenever a couple of peons quarreled (and they quarreled frequently), the majordomo, or foreman of the ranch, would cause these men to be stripped naked and placed in this room to settle their row with nature’s weapons.  When honor was satisfied, the victor came to this grating and announced it.  Not infrequently, peons have emerged from this room minus an ear or a nose, but, as a general thing, this method of settlement was to be preferred to knife or pistol.”

Farrel tossed an empty box against the door and invited the girl to climb up on it and peer into the room.  She did so.  Instantly a ferocious yell resounded from the semi-darkness within.

“Good gracious!  Is that a ghost?” Kay cried, and leaped to the ground.

“No; confound it!” Farrel growled.  “It’s your Japanese cook.  Pablo locked him in there this morning, in order that Carolina might have a clear field for her culinary art.  Pablo!”

His cry brought an answering hail from Pablo, over at the barn, and presently the old majordomo entered the compound.  Farrel spoke sternly to him in Spanish, and, with a shrug of indifference, Pablo unlocked the door of the settlement-room and the Japanese cook bounded out.  He was inarticulate with frenzy, and disappeared through the gate of the compound with an alacrity comparable only to that of a tin-canned dog.

“I knew he had been placed here temporarily,” Don Miguel confessed, “but I did think Pablo would have sense enough to let him out when breakfast was over.  I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.  I think that incident is the funniest I have ever seen,” the girl laughed.  “Poor outraged fellow!”