io and Tita both had their hungry mouths so full they could not
answer just then, but when the mozo had lifted Tita up on the horse
behind Carmen, and had taken Tonio up on his own horse, and they were on
their way home, they told Carmen and the mozo just how they got lost,
only neither one said a single word about their father or Pedro, or the
Tall Man, or the group they had seen around the fire.

They remembered what the Tall Man had said about coming back to punish
any one who should tell of the secret meeting, and they remembered how
fierce his voice sounded as he said it.

When at last they rode into the gate of the hacienda every one was so
glad to see them that the Twins felt like heroes.

Jose waved his hat and shouted when he saw them coming, and Jasmin came
tearing out to meet them with his tongue hanging out and his tail stuck
straight out behind him like the smoke behind a fast locomotive.

The news spread quickly through the village, and all the boys and girls
and the mothers came swarming out of their huts to greet them and to
ask a thousand questions about where they had been.

[Illustration]

The first one to reach them was Dona Teresa. She came running out of the
chapel, with her rebozo flying out behind her almost like Jasmin's tail,
and she clasped them in her arms and kissed them again and again and
called them her lambs, her angels, her precious doves.

She kissed the hands of Carmen and thanked her, and then she ran back
with the Twins to the chapel and made them say a prayer of thankfulness
with her before the image of the Virgin.

VI

It was not until she had them all to herself in their little adobe hut
that she made them tell her every word about their adventure. Of course
they told their mother everything--about the fire and the Tall Man, and
the guns, and what he said about coming back to punish any one who told.

Dona Teresa rocked back and forth on her knees and wiped her eyes on her
apron as she listened to them, while at the same time she made them hot
chocolate on the brasero.

As they were drinking it she said to them: "Listen, my children. I will
tell you a secret. Promise me first that you will never, never tell what
I am going to tell you now!"

The children promised.

Then Dona Teresa went on: "I am not wholly surprised at your father's
disappearance. I knew he had seen the Tall Man. I knew it after Judas
Iscariot's Day. The Tall Man talked then with him and Pedro a