ion 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.

"Crop-eared Jose!" cried Pearl, falling back a pace or two and looking
from her father to the two women in wide-eyed astonishment. "Why, they
are still looking for him. Are you not afraid?" She looked from one to
the other as if asking the question of all. She was not shocked, nor, to
tell the truth, particularly surprised after the first moment of wonder.
She had been used to strange company all her life, and ever since her
childhood, on her brief visits to her father's cabin, she had been
accustomed to his cronies, lean, brown, scarred pirates and picaroons,
full of strange Spanish oaths.

"You will not mention this in letters to your mother," ordered Gallito,
glooming at her with fierce eyes. "You know her. Caramba! If she should
guess, the world would know it."

"Lord, yes!" agreed Pearl uninterestedly. "You needn't be afraid of me,"
to Jose, "I don't tell what I know."

"That is true," commended Gallito, motioning her at the same time to the
table.

It seems a pity to record that such a supper was set before a woman
suffering from a wound of the heart. Women at all times are held to be
lacking in that epicurean appreciation of good food which man justly
extols; but when a woman's whole being is absorbed in a disappointment
in love, nectar and ambrosia are as sawdust to her.

On the outer rim of that circle which knew him but slightly, or merely
knew of him, the causes of the charmed life which Jose bore were a
matter of frequent speculat