na Teresa. "Come home with me at once. Thanks
be to the Holy Virgin, you'll share the turkey with us after all! I had
to cook him because we couldn't catch the rooster! Tell the Twins and
come right along."

[Illustration]

III

So while the guitars were tinkling and the rest of the people were still
singing and dancing and having the merriest kind of a merry Christmas,
Pancho and his family said good-night politely to Senor Fernandez and
his wife and slipped quietly away to the little adobe hut under the fig
tree.

When they were inside their little home once more, Dona Teresa made a
fire in the brasero and heated some of the turkey for Pancho, and while
he ate, Tonio and Tita stood on each side of their one chair, in which
he sat, and listened with their eyes and mouths both while their father
told about his adventures as a Soldier of the Revolution. And then they
told him all about the night they were lost, and the secret meeting, and
he was so astonished that he could hardly believe they had not dreamed
it until Tita told him just what the Tall Man had said, and what Pedro
had said, and about the pebble that rolled down.

Then he said, "Have you told any one about this?"

And Dona Teresa answered proudly, "Not a soul. Not even the priest."

"You've done well, then," Pancho said. "The Tall Man punishes those who
spoil his plans by talking of them. He has raised an army of two
thousand men in such ways. We enlisted for only four months, and in that
time we turned the region to the south of us altogether into the hands
of the Revolutionists. I intended to return home at the end of the four
months, but finally stayed a month more to finish the campaign."

"I knew you would come some time, my angel," cried Dona Teresa. "I have
prayed every day before the Virgin for your safe return."

"As God wills it," Pancho answered soberly. "I meant at any rate to
strike my blow for freedom, and to try to make things better for us
all."

"Well, have you?" asked Dona Teresa.

Pancho scratched his head with the old puzzled expression on his face.
"I don't know," he said at last. "Things are not right as they are,--I
know that,--and they never will be right if no one ever complains or
protests or makes any fuss about it. And I know, too, that these
uprisings never will stop until Mexico is better governed, and poor
people have the chance they long for and do not know how to get for
themselves. It is something just to kee