his father's behests had been the
groundwork of his education. He had therefore taken ship with alacrity,
and on this melting morning of December, as he gazed for the first time
at the multicolored vista before him, he was in great and expectant
spirits. Concerning the town itself, had he been put on the rack he
could have confessed to but two items of information: one was that his
father was chief official; and the other that there was not a book-shop
within its walls. To the latter fact he was utterly indifferent; he had
learned it haphazard on the way over: but the former was not without its
charm. The influence of that charm presently exerted itself. He was
conveyed from the ship in a government boat, and two hours later, while
his fellow-passengers were still engaged in feeing the supervisors of
the custom-house, he had reached the hacienda behind the hills.

The hacienda, or ingenio as it is more properly called, was several
miles of yellow striated with red, punctuated with palms and cut by
paths that were shaded with the great glistening leaves of the banana,
while here and there, Dantesque and unnatural in its grandeur, rose the
ceiba, its giant arms outstretched as though to shield the toiler from
the suffocation of the purple skies. And beneath, for contrast, the
brilliance of convolvuli and granadillas opposed the tender green. At
the southernmost end was Don Jayme's habitation, a one-story edifice,
built quadrangularwise, tiled and steep of roof, and semi-circled by a
veranda so veiled with vines that at a distance the house seemed a
massive mound of pistache.

"Even in Andalusia," thought Ruis, as the volante brought him to the
door, "there is nothing equal to this." Like all his race, he had a
quick eye to the beautiful, and for the moment he was bewildered by the
riot of color. And while the bewilderment still lingered, a gentleman,
slim and tall, entirely in white, with face and hands of the shade of
Turkish tobacco, kissed him on either cheek.

"God be praised, my son," he murmured, "you are here."

And with that he led him into the cool of the veranda. It had been years
since they had met, there was much to be said, and in that grave
unvociferous fashion which is peculiar to the Spaniard of Castile, in a
language which nightingales might envy, father and son discussed topics
of common and personal interest.

Thereafter for some little time, a fortnight to be exact, things went
very well indeed. R