e 10th of the month. He
leaves Santa Barbara on the 1st, and he will walk all the way,--a good
six days' journey, for he is old now and feeble; then he must stop
in Ventura for a Sunday, and a day at the Ortega's ranch, and at the
Lopez's,--there, there is a christening. Yes, the 10th is the very
earliest that he can be here,--near two weeks from now. So far as your
getting up is concerned, it might perhaps be next week. You will be
nearly well by that time."

"Yes, indeed," laughed Felipe, stretching himself out in the bed and
giving a kick to the bedclothes that made the high bedposts and the
fringed canopy roof shake and creak; "I am well now, if it were not for
this cursed weakness when I stand on my feet. I believe it would do me
good to get out of doors."

In truth, Felipe had been hankering for the sheep-shearing himself. It
was a brisk, busy, holiday sort of time to him, hard as he worked in it;
and two weeks looked long to wait.

"It is always thus after a fever," said his mother. "The weakness lasts
many weeks. I am not sure that you will be strong enough even in two
weeks to do the packing; but, as Juan Can said this morning, he stood
at the packing-bag when you were a boy, and there was no need of waiting
for you for that!"

"He said that, did he!" exclaimed Felipe, wrathfully. "The old man is
getting insolent. I'll tell him that nobody will pack the sacks but
myself, while I am master here; and I will have the sheep-shearing when
I please, and not before."

"I suppose it would not be wise to say that it is not to take place till
the Father comes, would it?" asked the Senora, hesitatingly, as if the
thing were evenly balanced in her mind. "The Father has not that hold
on the younger men he used to have, and I have thought that even in
Juan himself I have detected a remissness. The spirit of unbelief is
spreading in the country since the Americans are running up and down
everywhere seeking money, like dogs with their noses to the ground! It
might vex Juan if he knew that you were waiting only for the Father.
What do you think?"

"I think it is enough for him to know that the sheep-shearing waits for
my pleasure," answered Felipe, still wrathful, "and that is the end of
it." And so it was; and, moreover, precisely the end which Senora Moreno
had had in her own mind from the beginning; but not even Juan Canito
himself suspected its being solely her purpose, and not her son's. As
for Felipe, if any perso