est, when the shriveled stalks of giant oats were
stricken like trees, and lay across each other in rigid angles, and
a roar as of the sea came up from the writhing treetops in the sunken
valley. There were long weary nights of steady downpour, hammering
on the red tiles of the casa, and drumming on the shingles of the
new veranda, which was more terrible to be borne. Alone, but for the
servants, and an occasional storm-stayed tenant from Fair Plains,
Clarence might have, at such times, questioned the effect of this
seclusion upon his impassioned nature. But he had already been
accustomed to monastic seclusion in his boyish life at El Refugio, and
he did not reflect that, for that very reason, its indulgences might
have been dangerous. From time to time letters reached him from the
outer world of San Francisco,--a few pleasant lines from Mrs. Peyton, in
answer to his own chronicle of his half stewardship, giving the news of
the family, and briefly recounting their movements. She was afraid that
Susy's sensitive nature chafed under the restriction of mourning in the
gay city, but she trusted to bring her back for a change to Robles when
the rains were over. This was a poor substitute for those brief, happy
glimpses of the home circle which had so charmed him, but he accepted
it stoically. He wandered over the old house, from which the perfume
of domesticity seemed to have evaporated, yet, notwithstanding Mrs.
Peyton's playful permission, he never intruded upon the sanctity of the
boudoir, and kept it jealously locked.

He was sitting in Peyton's business room one morning, when Incarnacion
entered. Clarence had taken a fancy to this Indian, half steward, half
vacquero, who had reciprocated it with a certain dog-like fidelity,
but also a feline indirectness that was part of his nature. He had been
early prepossessed with Clarence through a kinsman at El Refugio, where
the young American's generosity had left a romantic record among the
common people. He had been pleased to approve of his follies before
the knowledge of his profitless and lordly land purchase had commended
itself to him as corroborative testimony. "Of true hidalgo blood, mark
you," he had said oracularly. "Wherefore was his father sacrificed by
mongrels! As to the others, believe me,--bah!"

He stood there, sombrero in hand, murky and confidential, steaming
through his soaked serape and exhaling a blended odor of equine
perspiration and cigarette smoke.