er wished her any harm all the days of my
life! There, put your arm about me yet a moment--so. Now here is your
gold back. I wish it not. The other is better. Tighter! Hold me yet
closer a moment. Ay-ah, dearie, it is sweet to feel once more the grip
of a strong man's arms about one--yes--though he love another--and she
a little puling woman who cannot even deliver herself of her first-born
son without a _Sangrador_. Go--go, they are coming to the door. I see
the lights disappear from the chamber above. Remember to strike the Tia
low--in the groin is best. She wears amulets and charms above, and you
might miss your mark!"

So, much astonished, and with his gold pieces in his hand, Ramon found
him in the little roughly finished lath-and-plaster temple. He sat on
the dry basin of the fountain and parted the vine leaves with his hands.
He was scarce a dozen yards from a door in the wall--a door recently
broken, which by two stone steps gave direct access to the garden.

Behind him were the wall and the fig-tree where he had spoken with the
gipsy. As he looked he fancied a figure still there, dark against the
sky, doubtless the woman La Giralda waiting to see if his knife struck
the Tia in the proper place.

Ramon listened, and through the darkness he could discern the keen,
insistent, yet to his ear sweet crying of the babe, presently broken by
a series of pats on the back into a staccato bleat, and finally stilling
itself little by little into an uncertain silence.

Then the door into the garden was cautiously opened, and a man clumsily
descended. He shut the door softly behind him and stood a while gazing
up at the lighted room. Then shaking his fist at the illuminated panes,
he moved towards the summer-house. El Sarria thought himself discovered,
and with a filling of his lungs which swept his breast up in a grand
curve, he drew his knife and stood erect in the darkest corner.

Stumbling and grumbling the man came to the aperture. He did not descend
the step which led to the interior, but instead groped through one of
the open windows for something behind the door.

"May holy San Isidro strike my brother with his lightnings!" he
muttered. "He gives me all the ill jobs, and when I have done them but
scant thanks for my pains!"

His hand went groping blindly this way and that, unwitting of what
lurked in the further gloom.

"From Ramon Garcia's knife at the Devil's Gorge to this young one's
undoing, all comes to