me speak the service. He made you speak the Spanish yes. And I,
Senora, knowing the deeds of these sinful cowboys, fearing worse than
disgrace to one so beautiful and so good as you, I could not do less
than marry you truly. At least you should be his wife. So I married you,
truly, in the service of my church."

"My God!" cried Madeline, rising.

"Hear me! I implore you, Senora, hear me out! Do not leave me! Do not
look so--so--Ah, Senora, let me speak a word for Senor Stewart. He was
drunk that night. He did not know what he was about. In the morning
he came to me, made me swear by my cross that I would not reveal the
disgrace he had put upon you. If I did he would kill me. Life is nothing
to the American vaquero, Senora. I promised to respect his command.
But I did not tell him you were his wife. He did not dream I had truly
married you. He went to fight for the freedom of my country--Senora, he
is one splendid soldier--and I brooded over the sin of my secret. If he
were killed I need never tell you. But if he lived I knew that I must
some day.

"Strange indeed that Senor Stewart and Padre Marcos should both come
to this ranch together. The great change your goodness wrought in my
beloved people was no greater than the change in Senor Stewart. Senora,
I feared you would go away one day, go back to your Eastern home,
ignorant of the truth. The time came when I confessed to Stewart--said
I must tell you. Senor, the man went mad with joy. I have never seen
so supreme a joy. He threatened no more to kill me. That strong,
cruel vaquero begged me not to tell the secret--never to reveal it. He
confessed his love for you--a love something like the desert storm. He
swore by all that was once sacred to him, and by my cross and my
church, that he would be a good man, that he would be worthy to have you
secretly his wife for the little time life left him to worship at your
shrine. You needed never to know. So I held my tongue, half pitying him,
half fearing him, and praying for some God-sent light.

"Senora, it was a fool's paradise that Stewart lived in. I saw him,
often. When he took me up into the mountains to have me marry that
wayward Bonita and her lover I came to have respect for a man whose
ideas about nature and life and God were at a variance with mine. But
the man is a worshiper of God in all material things. He is a part of
the wind and sun and desert and mountain that have made him. I have
never heard more beauti