a mite
like you! Has he been cutting up rough," he glanced toward her father,
"and worrying you?"

"Why didn't you come before?" She lifted her shadowed eyes to his.

He winced a little, his mouth twisting slightly. "Ain't it enough that
I've come now?" Something in his voice conveyed even to her who had so
long taken his unwearying devotion without question and as a matter of
course what it had cost him to seek her again.

They had drawn near the cabin by this time and Flick looked at Gallito's
frowning face a moment. "Are you needing me, Pearl?" His drawling voice
was as lazily indifferent as ever, but his glance held an intimation of
danger for Gallito which the old man did not fail to understand.

"Maybe," Pearl replied in a low voice. "You 'most always come when I
need you, Bob."

"I guess your interference ain't needed now, Flick," began Gallito. "I
can--"

Hughie ran his hand caressingly down the old Spaniard's sleeve. "No need
to tell old Bob that we're a united family, Pop," he cried. "Why I'm
already composing a wedding march." He caught his adopted father's hand
in his.

At this mute expression of affection from the being who was nearest his
heart Gallito's face softened a little, although he gazed back at Bob
Flick with a baffled and still scornful smile.

"Well," he said reluctantly, "it ain't often I confess I'm beat, but I
guess I'm too old to stand both Hughie and the girl taking sides against
me, not to speak of you, Flick, and I know if it came to a choice
between me and those two where you'd stand."

"There ain't going to be any sides taken," said Flick. "We are going to
give in and take what's coming to us, Gallito, like sensible men,
whether we like it or not. When's the wedding, Pearl?"

A great, beautiful wave of crimson swept over her face.

"Harry wants it right away," she said.

"The sooner the better," remarked Bob Flick dryly. "And, by the way"--he
put his hand in his pocket and drew out the little black leather bag she
had given Jose--"Jose sent you back this for a wedding present. Honest,
he didn't keep out more than three stones. Why," a flash of alarm on his
face, "what's the matter, Hughie?"

The blind boy was standing a little apart from the rest. His head was
thrown up and his face was pale. He was nervously clinching and
unclinching his hands, but with that exception his attitude was one of
tenseness and singular stillness, as if every faculty were concentrated.

"T