and as she was the regular customer who bought
more loaves and paid more promptly than the other, the panaderia
felt the loss keenly. Customers were very scarce, and the
grandmother's eyes became so weak that she could no longer sew. Rosa
sewed the little that she could, but some days there was scarcely
enough to eat at the panaderia, except the very few loaves in the
case--the loaves that the three hardly knew whether to dare eat or
not, for fear some one should come in and want to buy. There were
many other people who were poor and without work, and the little
family kept their troubles to themselves. The poor sick neighbor
always came every day and was given bread. Winter passed and spring
arrived without much change in the panaderia's prospects.

"We could have eaten that ourselves," thought Rosa one night when
the neighbor went out with the bread.

The grandmother had said that the poor were God's care, and he would
bless those who for his sake fed them.

"But we keep on being poorer and poorer," thought Rosa with a sigh.

Then she reproached herself. Had not her grandmother said that the
Lord cared about the panaderia? One day when spring was turning into
summer, the poor neighbor came in earlier than usual. Her face was
very white. Rosa and her grandmother were both by the counter. The
grandmother smiled and was about to draw out the bread and give it
to the woman. But the poor neighbor dropped her head on the counter,
and stretched out her hand toward the old grandmother. The
grandmother took the hand, and lo! in her own lay a little key.

"Take it to the Zanjero!" sobbed the sick neighbor, "and tell him to
forgive! It was the mescal made my husband do it!"

Little by little Rosa and her grandmother pieced together the story
of the small key. Some unscrupulous persons wished to obtain water
for irrigation without paying for it. A key was made that fitted the
padlocks of the little wooden gates leading from the zanja. By night
some one must open these gates and close them again before morning.
It was thieving, of course, and the Zanjero or his deputies might
catch the person who did it. But the sick neighbor's husband,
wanting money to buy more mescal, had been induced to undertake the
task of stealthily opening the gates. His wife, suspicious of his
errand, had followed him on the first night of his attempt. She had
seen him stop by a Mexican cactus, and raise something, she knew not
what, in the zanja.