lking to
himself. The other players had already gone out, laughing. The place was
nearly deserted. The Don suddenly caught sight of Ramon and came to him,
laying heavy hands on his shoulders, looking at him with bleary,
tear-filled eyes.

"My boy, my nephew," he exclaimed in Spanish, his voice shaking with boozy
emotion, "I am glad you are here. Come I must talk to you." And steadied
by Ramon he led the way to a bench in a corner. Here his manner suddenly
changed. He threw back his head haughtily and slapped his knee.

"I have lost five hundred dollars tonight," he announced proudly. "What do
I care? I am a rich man. I have lost a thousand dollars in the last three
nights. That is nothing. I am rich."

He thumped his chest, looking around defiantly. Then he leaned forward in
a confidential manner and lowered his voice.

"But these gringos--they have gone away and left me. You saw them?
_Cabrones!_ They have got my money. That is all they want. My boy, all
gringos are alike. They want nothing but money. They can hear the rattle
of a _peso_ as far as a _burro_ can smell a bear. They are mean, stingy!
Ah, my boy! It is not now as it was in the old days. Then money counted
for nothing! Then a man could throw away his last dollar and there were
always friends to give him more. But now your dollars are your only true
friends, and when you have lost them, you are alone indeed. Ah, my boy!
The old days were the best!" The old Don bent his head over his hands and
wept.

Ramon looked at him with a mighty disgust and with a resentment that
filled his throat and made his head hot. He had never before realized how
much broken by age and drink his uncle was. Before, he had suspected and
feared that Don Diego was wasting his property; now he knew it.

The Don presently looked up again with tear-filled eyes, and went on
talking, holding Ramon by the lapel of the coat in a heavy tremulous grip.
He talked for almost an hour, his senile mind wandering aimlessly through
the scenes of his long and picturesque career. He would tell tales of his
loves and battles of fifty years ago--tales full of lust and greed and
excitement. He would come back to his immediate troubles and curse the
gringos again for a pack of miserable dollar-mongers, who knew not the
meaning of friendship. And again his mind would leap back irrelevantly to
some woman he had loved or some man he had killed in the spacious days
where his imagination dwelt. Ramon liste