faced it with an unduly proud and
sensitive spirit concealed beneath a manner of aristocratic indifference.
In the little southwestern town where he had lived all his life, except
the last three years, his social position was ostensibly of the highest.
He was spoken of as belonging to an old and prominent family. Yet he knew
of mothers who carefully guarded their daughters from the peril of falling
in love with him, and most of his boyhood fights had started when some one
called him a "damned Mexican" or a "greaser."

Except to an experienced eye there was little in his appearance or in his
manner to suggest his race. His swarthy complexion indicated perhaps a
touch of the Moorish blood in his Spanish ancestry, but he was no darker
than are many Americans bearing Anglo-Saxon names, and his eyes were grey.
His features were aquiline and pleasing, and he had in a high degree that
bearing, at once proud and unself-conscious, which is called aristocratic.
He spoke English with a very slight Spanish accent.

When he had gone away to a Catholic law school in St. Louis, confident of
his speech and manner and appearance, he had believed that he was leaving
prejudice behind him; but in this he had been disappointed. The raw spots
in his consciousness, if a little less irritated at the college, were by
no means healed. Some persons, it is true, seemed to think nothing of his
race one way or the other; to some, mostly women, it gave him an added
interest; but in the long run it worked against him. It kept him out of a
fraternity, and it made his career in football slow and hard.

When he finally won the coveted position of quarterback, in spite of team
politics, he made a reputation by the merciless fashion in which he drove
his eleven, and by the fury of his own playing.

The same bitter emulative spirit which had impelled him in football drove
him to success in his study of the law. Books held no appeal for him, and
he had no definite ambitions, but he had a good head and a great desire to
show the gringos what he could do. So he had graduated high in his class,
thrown his diploma into the bottom of his trunk, and departed from his
alma mater without regret.

The limited train upon which he took passage for home afforded specially
good opportunity for his habit of mental philandering. The passengers were
continually going up and down between the dining car at one end of the
train and the observation car at the other, so that