to revolutionize the business, and cut out Cuba on that hillside."

"Oh, the usual luck! He couldn't get proper cultivators, and the
Injins wouldn't work regular. I must try and get hold of some of the
Comandante's stock; but I'm out of favor with the old man since Winslow
and I wrecked that fishing-boat on the rocks off yonder. He always
believed we were trying to run off, like Captain Bunker. That's why he
stopped our shipbuilding, I really believe."

"All the same, we might have had it built and ready now but for our
laziness. We might have worked on it nights without their knowing it,
and slipped off some morning in the fog."

"And we wouldn't have got one of the women to go with us! If we are
getting shiftless here--and I don't say we're not--these women have just
planted themselves and have taken root. But that ain't all: there's
the influence of that infernal sneak Hurlstone! He's set the Comandante
against us, you know; he, and the priest, the Comandante, and Nelly
Keene make up the real Council of Todos Santos. Between them they've
shoved out the poor little Alcalde, who's ready to give up everything to
dance attendance on Mrs. Brimmer. They run the whole concern, and they
give out that it's owing to them that we're given parole of the town,
and the privilege of spending our money and working these mines. Who'd
have thought that sneak Hurlstone would have played his cards so well?
It makes me regularly sick to hear him called 'Don Diego.'"

"Yet you're mightily tickled when that black-eyed sister of the Alcalde
calls you 'Don Carlos,'" said Crosby, yawning.

"Dona Isabel," said Brace, with some empressement, "is a lady of
position, and these are only her national courtesies."

"She just worships Miss Keene, and I reckon she knows by this time
all about your old attentions to her friend," said Crosby, with lazy
mischief.

"My attentions to Miss Keene were simply those of an ordinary
acquaintance, and were never as strongly marked as yours to Mrs.
Brimmer."

"Who has deserted ME as Miss Keene did YOU," rejoined Crosby.

Brace's quick color had risen again, and he would have made some sharp
retort, but the jingling of spurs caught his ear. They both turned
quickly, and saw Banks approaching. He was dressed as a vaquero, but
with his companions' like exaggeration of detail; yet, while his spurs
were enormous, and his sombrero unusually expansive, he still clung to
his high shirt-collars and accurately tie