as not with these fugitives. That could
not be! Heaven forbid!

"If I'd my legs, I'd go and see for myself." said Juan Can. "It would
be some comfort to know even the worst. Perdition take the Senora, who
drove her to it! Ay, drove her to it! That's what I say, Luigo." In some
of his most venturesome wrathy moments he would say: "There's none
of you know the truth about the Senorita but me! It's a hard hand the
Senora's reared her with, from the first. She's a wonderful woman, our
Senora! She gets power over one."

But the Senora's power was shaken now. More changed than all else in the
changed Moreno household, was the relation between the Senora Moreno and
her son Felipe. On the morning after Ramona's disappearance, words had
been spoken by each which neither would ever forget. In fact, the Senora
believed that it was of them she was dying, and perhaps that was not far
from the truth; the reason that forces could no longer rally in her to
repel disease, lying no doubt largely in the fact that to live seemed no
longer to her desirable.

Felipe had found the note Ramona had laid on his bed. Before it was yet
dawn he had waked, and tossing uneasily under the light covering had
heard the rustle of the paper, and knowing instinctively that it was
from Ramona, had risen instantly to make sure of it. Before his mother
opened her window, he had read it. He felt like one bereft of his senses
as he read. Gone! Gone with Alessandro! Stolen away like a thief in the
night, his dear, sweet little sister! Ah, what a cruel shame! Scales
seemed to drop from Felipe's eyes as he lay motionless, thinking of
it. A shame! a cruel shame! And he and his mother were the ones who had
brought it on Ramona's head, and on the house of Moreno. Felipe felt
as if he had been under a spell all along, not to have realized this.
"That's what I told my mother!" he groaned,--"that it drove her to
running away! Oh, my sweet Ramona! what will become of her? I will go
after them, and bring them back;" and Felipe rose, and hastily dressing
himself, ran down the veranda steps, to gain a little more time to
think. He returned shortly, to meet his mother standing in the doorway,
with pale, affrighted face.

"Felipe!" she cried, "Ramona is not here."

"I know it," he replied in an angry tone. "That is what I told you we
should do,--drive her to running away with Alessandro!"

"With Alessandro!" interrupted the Senora.

"Yes," continued Felipe,--"with Ale