them, and turned in apprehension, whilst the man
on the floor groaned aloud in his fear. But the Vigilantes rode by
them unsuspecting. Across their saddles they carried the blackened and
dripping bodies of Lenares and his lieutenants; through the willows
galloped the caballeros in search of John Power. But they did not
find him, then nor after. Dona Pomposa hid him in her woodhouse until
midnight, when he stole away and was never seen near San Luis again. A
few years later came the word that he had been assassinated by one of
his lieutenants in Lower California, and his body eaten by wild hogs.

IX

"Al contado plasentero
Del primer beso de amor,
Un fuego devorador
Que en mi pecho siento ardor.

"Y no me vuelvas a besar
Por que me quema tu aliento,
Ya desfayeserme siento,
Mas enbriagada de amor.

"Si a cuantas estimas, das
Beso en pruebas de amor;
Si me amas hasme el favor
De no besarme jamas."

A caballero on a prancing horse sang beneath Eulogia's window, his
jingling spurs keeping time to the tinkling of his guitar. Eulogia
turned over in bed, pulling the sheet above her ears, and went to sleep.

The next day, when Don Tomas Garfias asked her hand of her mother, Dona
Coquetta accepted him with a shrug of her shoulders.

"And thou lovest me, Eulogia?" murmured the enraptured little dandy as
Dona Pomposa and Aunt Anastacia good-naturedly discussed the composition
of American pies.

"No."

"Ay! senorita! Why, then, dost thou marry me? No one compels thee."

"It pleases me. What affair of thine are my reasons if I consent to
marry you?"

"Oh, Eulogia, I believe thou lovest me! Why not? Many pretty girls have
done so before thee. Thou wishest only to tease me a little."

"Well, do not let me see too much of you before the wedding-day, or I
may send you back to those who admire you more than I do."

"Perhaps it is well that I go to San Francisco to remain three months,"
said the young man, sulkily; he had too much vanity to be enraged. "Wilt
thou marry me as soon as I return?"

"As well then as any other time."

Garfias left San Luis a few days later to attend to important business
in San Francisco, and although Dona Pomposa and Aunt Anastacia began at
once to make the wedding outfit, Eulogia appeared to forget that she
ever had given a promise of marriage. She was as great a belle as ever,
for no one believed that she would keep faith with any man, much less
with such a