ll trembling.

"It is not all,--Mother of God! it is not all, master!" he stammered,
dropping to his knees and still crossing himself. "This morning, beside
the corral, they find the horse of Pedro Valdez splashed and spattered
on saddle and bridle, and in the stirrup,--dost thou hear? the
STIRRUP,--hanging, the torn-off boot of Valdez! Ah, God! The same as
HIS! Now do you understand? It is HIS vengeance. No! Jesu forgive me! it
is the vengeance of God!"

Clarence was staggered.

"And you have not found Valdez? You have looked for him?" he said,
hurriedly throwing on his clothes.

"Everywhere,--all over the plain. The whole rancho has been out since
sunrise,--here and there and everywhere. And there is nothing! Of course
not. What would you?" He pointed solemnly to the ground.

"Nonsense!" said Clarence, buttoning his coat and seizing his hat.
"Follow me."

He ran down the passage, followed by Incarnacion, through the excited,
gesticulating crowd of servants in the patio, and out of the back gate.
He turned first along the wall of the casa towards the barred window of
the boudoir. Then a cry came from Incarnacion.

They ran quickly forward. Hanging from the grating of the window, like
a mass of limp and saturated clothes, was the body of Pedro Valdez, with
one unbooted foot dangling within an inch of the ground. His head was
passed inside the grating and fixed as at that moment when the first
spring of the frightened horse had broken his neck between the bars as
in a garrote, and the second plunge of the terrified animal had carried
off his boot in the caught stirrup when it escaped.

CHAPTER XI.

The winter rains were over and gone, and the whole long line of
Californian coast was dashed with color. There were miles of yellow and
red poppies, leagues of lupines that painted the gently rounded hills
with soft primary hues, and long continuous slopes, like low mountain
systems, of daisies and dandelions. At Sacramento it was already summer;
the yellow river was flashing and intolerable; the tule and marsh
grasses were lush and long; the bloom of cottonwood and sycamore
whitened the outskirts of the city, and as Cyrus Hopkins and his
daughter Phoebe looked from the veranda of the Placer Hotel, accustomed
as they were to the cool trade winds of the coast valleys, they felt
homesick from the memory of eastern heats.

Later, when they were surveying the long dinner tables at the table
d'hote with somethi