isn't he?"

"They are wonderfully built, most of them. This chap was pretty badly
used by his master--they are virtually slaves, you know,--and bolted,
and Jimsy found him one night----"

The boy got up and came over to them. "Starving, and almost dead with
weakness and his wounds,--beaten almost to death and one of his ears
hacked off! And Uncle Rich' took him in and kept him for me."

His uncle grinned and flung an arm across his shoulder. "And had the
devil--and many _pesos_ to pay to the local _jefe_ and the naturally
peevish gentleman who lost him. But at that I'll have to admit he's the
best man on the _rancho_ to-day." He threw a teasing look at Honor,
glowing and misty-eyed over Jimsy's championing of the oppressed. "The
only trouble is, I suppose Jimsy will take him with him when he sets up
housekeeping for himself. What do you think, Maddy? Could Yaqui Juan be
taught to buttle?"

"No butlers for us, Uncle Rich'!" Jimsy was red but unabashed. "We might
rent him for a movie star and live on his earnings. We aren't very clear
yet as to what we _will_ live on!"

The personage looked at him gravely. "You are going to settle in Los
Angeles?"

"_Yes!_" said Jimsy and Honor in a breath. The good new life coming
which would be the good old life over again, only better!

"Oh," said Mrs. King, "I forgot,--I asked them to come up from the
quarters and make music for you! They're here now! Look!" She went to
the window and the others followed. The garden was filled with vaguely
seen figures, massed in groups, and there was a soft murmur of voices
and the tentative strumming of guitars. "Shall we come out on the
veranda? You'll want a _rebozo_, Honor,--the nights are sharp." She
called back to the serving woman. "Put out the lights, Josita."

They sat in the dusk and looked out into the veiled and shadowy spaces
and the dim singers lifted up their voices. The moon would rise late;
there was no light save the tiny pin points of the cigarettes; it gave
the music an elfin, eerie quality.

"Pretty crude after Italy, eh, Honor?" Richard King wanted to know.

"Oh, it's delicious, Mr. King! Please ask them to sing another!"

"May we have the _Golondrina_?" the eldest guest wanted to know.

"Well--how about it, Maddy? Think we're all cheerful enough? We know
that two of us are! All right!" He called down the request and it seemed
to Honor that a little quiver went through the singers in the shadow.
The guitars broke