I have feel like my _corazon_--my
heart--goin' make barbecue in my belly. I am in love. I know. Nobody
can fool me. An' those boy, Don Miguel, I tell you, _senor_, hee's
crazy for love weeth the Senorita Kay."

Parker crooked his finger, and in obedience to the summons Pablo
approached the bench.

"How do you know all this, Pablo?"

Let us here pause and consider. In the summer of 1769 a dashing,
care-free Catalonian soldier in the company of Don Gaspar de Portola,
while swashbuckling his way around the lonely shores of San Diego Bay,
had encountered a comely young squaw. _Mira, senores_! Of the blood
that flowed in the veins of Pablo Artelan, thirty-one-thirty-seconds
was Indian, but the other one-thirty-second was composed of equal parts
of Latin romance and conceit.

Pablo's great moment had arrived. Lowly peon that he was, he knew
himself at this moment to be a most important personage; death would
have been preferable to the weakness of having failed to take advantage
of it.

"Why I know, Senor Parker?" Pablo laughed briefly, lightly,
mirthlessly, his cacchination carefully designed to convey the
impression that he considered the question extremely superfluous. With
exasperating deliberation he drew forth his little bag of tobacco and a
brown cigarette paper; he smiled as he dusted into the cigarette paper
the requisite amount of tobacco. With one hand he rolled the
cigarette; while wetting the flap with his garrulous tongue, he gazed
out upon the San Gregorio as one who looks beyond a lifted veil.

He answered his own question. "Well, _senor_--and you, _senora_! I
tell you. _Por nada_--forgeeve; please, I speak the Spanish--for
notheeng, those boy he poke weeth hee's thumb the rib of me."

"No?" cried John Parker, feigning profound amazement.

"_Es verdad_. Eet ees true, _senor_. Those boy hee's happy, no? Eh?"

"Apparently."

"You bet you my life. Well, las' night those boy hee's peench weeth
his thumb an' theese fingair--what you suppose?"

"I give it up, Pablo."

Pablo wiped away with a saddle-colored paw a benignant and paternal
smile. He wagged his head and scuffed his heel in the dirt. He
feasted his soul on the sensation that was his.

"Those boy hee's peench--" a dramatic pause. Then:

"Eef you tell to Don Miguel those things I tol' you--_Santa
Marias_--Hees cut my throat."

"We will respect your confidence, Pablo," Mrs. Parker hastened to
assure the traitor.

"A