“Make you acquainted with Mis’ Thomas, Miss Gallito,” said Mrs. Nitschkan heartily.  “Marthy’s one of my oldest friends an’ one of my newest converts.  She’s all right if she could let the boys alone, an’ not be always tangled up in some flirtation that her friends has got to sit up nights scheming to get her out of.  That pink bow an’ that crepe veil shows she ain’t got the right idea of her responsibilities as a widow.  So I brought her up to my little cabin, just a quarter of a mile through the trees there, hopin’ I’d get her mind turned on more sensible things than men.  Gosh a’mighty!  She’s got a chance to shoot bear here.”

“I don’t think you got any call to introduce me to the Black Pearl that-a-way, Sadie.”  Mrs. Thomas’s eyes filled with ready tears.  “It ain’t manners.  I wouldn’t have come with her, Miss Gallito, but I got to see pretty plain that the gentleman,” here she blushed and bridled, “that was courting me was awful anxious to get hold of the money and the cabin that my last husband, in his grave ’most six months now, left me.”  She wiped the tears from her eyes on the back of her hand, a movement hampered somewhat by the fact that her handkerchief had been fashioned into a bag to hold some chocolate creams and was tied tightly to her thumb.

“That’s what you get for cavorting around with a spindle-shanked, knock-kneed, mush-brained jack-rabbit of a man,” muttered Mrs. Nitschkan scornfully.

But this thrust was ignored by Mrs. Thomas.  The color had risen on her cheeks and there was a light in her eyes.  Shyly, yet gleefully, she drew a letter from her pocket.  “I got a letter from him to-day with an awful cute motto in it.  Look!” She showed it proudly to Pearl, Jose and Gallito.  “It’s on cream-tinted paper, with a red and blue border, an’,” simpering consciously, “it says in black and gold letters, ’A Little Widow Is a Dangerous Thing.’”

The little group seemed for the moment too stunned to speak.  Mrs. Nitschkan was the first to recover herself.  “Gosh a’mighty!” she murmured in an awed whisper, and allowed her glance to travel slowly over Mrs. Thomas’s well-cushioned, six feet of womanhood, “A—­little—­widow!” huskily.

Gallito seized the opportunity here to direct Pearl’s attention to the bandit, who had been nudging him and whispering to him for the last moment or so.

“Pearl, this is—­” he hesitated a moment, “Jose.”

Mrs. Nitschkan looked up at him in quick astonishment.  “Gosh a’mighty,” she cried, “ain’t that kind o’ reckless?”

But Jose nodded a quick, cynical approval and, with a sudden turn, executed a deep bow to the Pearl, one hand on the heart, expressing gallantry, fealty, the humblest admiration; all these sincere and yet permeated with a subtle and volatile mockery.

“Better so, Francisco,” he said in a voice which scarcely betrayed an accent, and indeed this was not strange considering that he spoke the patois of many people, being a born linguist.  His father had been a Frenchman, a Gascon, but his mother was a daughter of Seville.  “But you have not said all.”  He drew himself up with haughty and self-conscious pride and, with a sweeping gesture of his long fingers, lifted the hair from his ears and stood thus, leering like Pan.