a draft in noble excess of all arrears and charges, the widow’s heart was lifted, and the rock smitten with the golden wand gushed beneficence that shone in a new gown for the widow and a new suit for “Johnny,” her son, a new oil cloth in the hall, better service to the lodgers, and, let us be thankful, a kindlier consideration for the poor little black-eyed painter from Monterey, then dreadfully behind in her room rent.  For, to tell the truth, the calls upon Miss De Haro’s scant purse by her uncle had lately been frequent, perjury having declined in the Monterey market, through excessive and injudicious supply, until the line of demarcation between it and absolute verity was so finely drawn that Victor Garcia had remarked that “he might as well tell the truth at once and save his soul, since the devil was in the market.”

Mistress Plodgitt, the landlady, could not resist the desire to acquaint Carmen De Haro with her good fortune.  “He was always a friend of yours, my dear,—­and I know him to be a gentleman that would never let a poor widow suffer; and see what he says about you!” Here she produced Thatcher’s note and read:  “Tell my little neighbor that I shall come back soon to carry her and her sketching tools off by force, and I shall not let her return until she has caught the black mountains and the red rocks she used to talk about, and put the ‘Blue Mass’ mill in the foreground of the picture I shall order.”

What is this, little one?  Surely, Carmen, thou needst not blush at this, thy first grand offer.  Holy Virgin! is it of a necessity that thou shouldst stick the wrong end of thy brush in thy mouth, and then drop it in thy lap?  Or was it taught thee by the good Sisters at the convent to stride in that boyish fashion to the side of thy elders and snatch from their hands the missive thou wouldst read?  More of this we would know, O Carmen,—­smallest of brunettes,—­speak, little one, even in thine own melodious speech, that I may commend thee and thy rare discretion to my own fair countrywomen.

Alas, neither the present chronicler nor Mistress Plodgitt got any further information from the prudent Carmen, and must fain speculate upon certain facts that were already known.

Mistress Carmen’s little room was opposite to Thatcher’s, and once or twice, the doors being open, Thatcher had a glimpse across the passage of a black-haired and a sturdy, boyish little figure in a great blue apron, perched on a stool before an easel, and on the other hand, Carmen had often been conscious of the fumes of a tobacco pipe penetrating her cloistered seclusion, and had seen across the passage, vaguely enveloped in the same nicotine cloud, an American Olympian, in a rocking chair, with his feet on the mantel shelf.  They had once or twice met on the staircase, on which occasion Thatcher had greeted her with a word or two of respectful yet half-humorous courtesy,—­a courtesy which never really offends a true woman, although it often piques her