thers? Was he to know
no more than that? With such gifts as God had given him, was he not at
least to have some word in disposing of them? Ah! SHE would not stand
it.

The boy gazed admiringly at the piquant energy of the little figure
before him, and envied her courage. "It is the mestizo blood," he
murmured to himself. Then aloud, "Thou shouldst have been a man, 'Nita."

"And thou a woman."

"Or a priest. Eh, what is that?"

They had both risen, Juanita defiantly, her black braids flying as she
wheeled and suddenly faced the thicket, Francisco clinging to her with
trembling hands and whitened lips. A stone, loosened from the hillside,
had rolled to their feet; there was a crackling in the alders on the
slope above them.

"Is it a bear, or a brigand?" whispered Francisco, hurriedly, sounding
the uttermost depths of his terror in the two words.

"It is an eavesdropper," said Juanita, impetuously; "and who and why, I
intend to know," and she started towards the thicket.

"Do not leave me, good Juanita," said the young acolyte, grasping the
girl's skirt.

"Nay; run to the hacienda quickly, and leave me to search the thicket.
Run!"

The boy did not wait for a second injunction, but scuttled away, his
long coat catching in the brambles, while Juanita darted like a
kitten into the bushes. Her search was fruitless, however, and she was
returning impatiently when her quick eye fell upon a letter lying amidst
the dried grass where she and Francisco had been seated the moment
before. It had evidently fallen from his breast when he had risen
suddenly, and been overlooked in his alarm. It was Father Pedro's letter
to the Father Superior of San Jose.

In an instant she had pounced upon it as viciously as if it had been the
interloper she was seeking. She knew that she held in her fingers the
secret of Francisco's sudden banishment. She felt instinctively that
this yellowish envelope, with its red string and its blotch of red seal,
was his sentence and her own. The little mestiza had not been brought up
to respect the integrity of either locks or seals, both being unknown
in the patriarchal life of the hacienda. Yet with a certain feminine
instinct she looked furtively around her, and even managed to dislodge
the clumsy wax without marring the pretty effigy of the crossed keys
impressed upon it. Then she opened the letter and read.

Suddenly she stopped and put back her hair from her brown temples. Then
a succession o