is friend with a grave face. "Jock, I
DO know something about it--more about it than any one thinks. You and I
are old friends. Shall I tell you WHAT I know?"

Jock's handsome face became a trifle paler, but his frank, clear eyes
rested steadily on the consul's.

"Go on!" he said.

"I know that this flower which I am wearing was the signal for the
rendezvous this evening," said the consul slowly, "and this paper,"
taking it from his pocket, "contained the time of the meeting, written
in the lady's own hand. I know who she was, for I saw her face as
plainly as I see yours now, by the light of the same fire; it was as
pale, but not as frank as yours, old man. That is what I know. But I
know also what people THINK they know, and for that reason I put that
paper in YOUR hand. It is yours--your vindication--your REVENGE, if you
choose. Do with it what you like."

Jock, with unchanged features and undimmed eyes, took the paper from the
consul's hand, without looking at it.

"I may do with it what I like?" he repeated.

"Yes."

He was about to drop it into the fire, but the consul stayed his hand.

"Are you not going to LOOK at the handwriting first?"

There was a moment of silence. Jock raised his eyes with a sudden flash
of pride in them and said, "No!"

The friends stood side by side, grasping each other's hands, as the
burning paper leaped up the chimney in a vanishing flame.

"Do you think you have done quite right, Jock, in view of any scandal
you may hear?"

"Quite! You see, old man, I know MY WIFE--but I don't think that Deeside
KNOWS HIS."

THE MYSTERY OF THE HACIENDA.

Dick Bracy gazed again at the Hacienda de los Osos, and hesitated. There
it lay--its low whitewashed walls looking like a quartz outcrop of the
long lazy hillside--unmistakably hot, treeless, and staring broadly in
the uninterrupted Californian sunlight. Yet he knew that behind those
blistering walls was a reposeful patio, surrounded by low-pitched
verandas; that the casa was full of roomy corridors, nooks, and
recesses, in which lurked the shadows of a century, and that hidden by
the further wall was a lonely old garden, hoary with gnarled pear-trees,
and smothered in the spice and dropping leaves of its baking roses. He
knew that, although the unwinking sun might glitter on its red tiles,
and the unresting trade winds whistle around its angles, it always kept
one unvarying temperature and untroubled calm, as if the dignity o