see me."

"How did he find out?"

"I suppose you gave our names to the agent when you took the place,
didn't you?"

"I gave mine; and--yes, I think I mentioned you."

"If you didn't, I mentioned myself. I was at San Miguel, two weeks you
remember, while you were making ready down here; and I venture to say
almost everybody remembers Carl Brenner."

Mark smiled. Carl's fixed, assured self-conceit in the face of the utter
failure he had made of his life did not annoy, but rather amused him; it
seemed part of the lad's nature.

"I don't want to grudge you your amusement, Carl," he said; "but I don't
much like this Schwartz of yours."

"He won't stay; he has to go back to-day. He came in a cart with a man
from San Miguel, who, by some rare chance, had an errand down this
forgotten, God-forsaken, dead-alive old road. The man will pass by on
his way home this afternoon, and Schwartz is to meet him at the edge of
the barren."

"Have an early dinner, then; there are birds and venison, and there is
lettuce enough for a salad. Scip can make you some coffee."

But, although he thus proffered his best, none the less did the elder
brother take with him the key of the little chest which contained his
small store of brandy and the two or three bottles of orange wine which
he had brought down with him from San Miguel.

After he had gone, Schwartz and Carl strolled around the plantation in
the sunshine. Schwartz did not care to sit down among Carl's tombs; he
said they made him feel moldy. Carl argued the point with him in vain,
and then gave it up, and took him around to the causeway across the
sugar-waste, where they stretched themselves out in the shade cast by
the ruined wall of the old mill.

"What brought this brother of yours away down here?" asked the visitor,
watching a chameleon on the wall near by. "See that little beggar
swelling out his neck!"

"He's catching flies. In a storm they will come and hang themselves by
one paw on our windows, and the wind will blow them out like dead
leaves, and rattle them about, and they'll never move. But, when the
sun shines out, there they are all alive again."

"But about your brother?"

"He isn't my brother."

"What?"

"My mother, a widow, named Brenner, with one son, Carl, married his
father, a widower, named Deal, with one son, Mark. There you have the
whole."

"He is a great deal older than you. I suppose he has been in the habit
of assisting you?"

"Never sa