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wish to recall them, but they forced themselves upon her: "Never
trust a gentleman, Agueda; he will only betray you."
"I should think much of your warning, Nada," thought Agueda, "if I
saw other gentlemen. I never do see them. If I do, he will protect
me." The danger had not arrived. It could never come now. She had
found her bulwark and her defence.

FOOTNOTE:
[1] Pronounced E-see-dro.
 II
"When the flood has subsided," Agueda had said to herself, "all will
be as before. But stay! Would anything ever be as before? Well,
what matter? Who would go back? Shall we not trust those whom
we love? Life is the better for it. This was life. Life was all happiness,
all joy. The future? There was to be no future but this. This life of
hers and his should be the same until death claimed the one or the
other. God grant that they might go together, rather than that one
should be left behind. Let them go in a greater flood, perhaps, than
the one which they had outspent upon the thatched roof in the
shelter of the old chimenea."
Agueda knew not the meaning of those words of calculation—"the
world." She had never known the world, she had never seen the
world. She found herself living as many did about her. Only that they
had heart-burnings, jealousies, disappointments, and sorrows. She
was secure, and she pitied them that their lots had not been cast
within so safe a fold as hers. Her nature, if ignorant, was undefiled
and undepraved; and noble, in that she found no sacrifice too great
for this splendid young god who claimed her. What else was her
mission in life but to make his life as near Heaven as earthly
existence could become? She stretched out her young arms to the
sky with a glow of happiness that asked nothing further of God.
There were the mountains, the fields, the forests, the plantations,
the river, and the rambling, thatched casa. These made for her the
world.
Sometimes she thought of and pitied Aneta at El Cuco. Poor Aneta,
who had thought that a life-long happiness was hers, when suddenly
one day Don Mateo had returned from the city with a bride.
"Poor Aneta!" Agueda used often to say, with a pitying smile through
which her own contentment broke in ripples of joy. How could she
trust a man like Don Mateo? As Agueda sat and thought, she
mended with anxious but unskilled fingers the pile of linen which old
Juana had brought in from the ironing room. Juana had clumped
along the back veranda and set the basket down with a heavy
thump. There were table linen and bed linen, there were the Señor's
striped shirts of fine material from the North, and his dainty
underwear, and Agueda's neat waists and collars keeping company
with them in truly domestic manner. Agueda had never done menial
work; Uncle Adan's position as manager of the plantation had
secured something better for his niece.
If Uncle Adan knew the truth, he made no sign. The lax state of
morals in the country had always been the same. In reality he saw
no harm in it. Besides which, had he wished to, what change could
he make—he, a simple manager and farming man, against the
owner of the hacienda, a rich and powerful Señor from Adan's point
of view.
Suddenly Agueda remembered that she had not seen Aneta for a
long time. She would go now, this very minute, and pay the visit so
long overdue. She arose at once. With characteristic carelessness
she dropped the sheet upon which she had been engaged on the
floor, took from its peg the old straw hat, and clapped it over her
boyish curls. The hat was yellow, it had a peaked crown, and twisted
round the crown was a handkerchief of pale blue. Agueda made no
toilet; she hardly looked at her smiling image in the glass. From the
corner of the room she took a time-worn umbrella, which had once
been white, and started towards the door. A backward glance
showed her the confusion of the room. For herself she did not care,
but the Señor might come in perhaps before her return. He had
gone to the mail-station across the bay; the post-office and the bank
were both there. He was bringing home some bags of pesos with
which to pay his men. Possibly he would bring a letter or two from
the fruit agents, or the merchant to whom he sold the little coffee
that he raised; but the pesos were more of a certainty than the
letters. If he returned home before her, the sitting-room would have
a disorderly appearance, and he disliked disorder. His mother, the
Doña Maria, had been a very neat old lady.
There are some persons to whom order and neatness are inborn.
With a touch of a deft finger here or there, an apartment becomes
at once a place where the most critical may enter. To others it is a
labor to make a room appear well cared for. It may be immaculate in
all that pertains to dust or the thorough cleanliness of linen or
woodwork, but the power to so impress the beholder is lacking.
Agueda was one of these. She sighed as she gazed at the unkempt
appearance of the room. There was not much the matter, and yet
she did not know how to remedy it. She re-entered the room and
picked up the sheet from the floor, together with a pillow-slip whose
starched glossiness had caused it to slide down to keep the sheet
company. Folding these, not any too precisely, she laid them upon
the chair where she had lately sat. Then she glanced around the
room again. Its careless air still offended her, but time was flying,
and she had a long walk before her. Suddenly she put her hand to
her ear and took from behind it the rose that had been there since
early morning. It was the first that she had struggled to raise, and it
had repaid her efforts, in that hot section of the country, by dwining
and dwindling like a puny child. Still, it was a rose. She laid it on the
badly folded sheet; it gave an air of habitation to the room. She
smiled down at this, her messenger. She gave the linen a final pat
and went out, closing the door softly. It was as if a young mother
had left her sleeping child to be awakened by its father, should he be
the first to return.
"It is something of me," thought Agueda. "It will be the first to greet
him."
Agueda stepped out on the broad veranda. The loose old boards
creaked even under her slight weight.
"Juana!" she called, "I'm going to see Aneta at El Cuco." She made
no other explanation. He would ask as soon as he returned, and
they would tell him.
"Youah neva fin youah roaad in dis yer fawg," squeaked Juana.
"The fog may lift," laughed Agueda.
The river, forgetful of its past turbulence, smiled and glanced and
beckoned as it slipped tranquilly onward, but Agueda did not answer
the summons. She turned abruptly to the right and crossed the well-
known potrero path. This led her for a quarter of a mile through the
mellow pasture-land, where horses were browsing. The grey was not
there—sure sign of his master's absence, but the little chestnut was
in evidence, and farther along, beyond the wire fence, were the
great bulls, which had not been driven afield with the suckers. There
stood Cæsar, the big brown bull with the great, irregular white spots.
Agueda went close to the fence, and picked a handful of sweet
herbs, such as Cæsar loved.
"Cæsar," she called, "Cæsar, it is I that have the sweet things for
you."
Cæsar threw up his head quickly, tossing long strings of saliva into
the air. He stood for a moment with hesitant look, then perceiving
that it was Agueda, trotted, tail held stiff, to where she waited, her
hand held out to him. He extended his thick neck, holding his wet,
pink nostrils just over the barrier, wound his dripping tongue round
the dainty, and then withdrew his head that he might eat with ease.
"Too bad, poor Cæsar, that the horses get all the sweets, and you
none." With awkward arm held high, that she might not catch her
sleeve upon the topmost wire, she patted the animal's nose; then
thrust one more bunch of grass into the ready cavity, and turning,
ran along toward the rise.
When Agueda had closed the rickety potrero gate, she started up
the elevation which confronted her. Here the young bananas were
just showing above the ground. She had deplored the fact that this
pretty hill-forest had been sacrificed to banana culture, and had
hated to see the great giants which she had known from childhood
cut and slashed. At the fall of each one of them she had felt as if she
had lost a friend. "I shall never sit under the gri-gri again," she had
thought, "and eat my guavas as I look down on the river"; or, "I
shall never again play house beneath the old mahogany that stood
up there at the edge of the meadow." The face of nature was
changed for her in this particular. It was the only thing that she had
to make her unhappy. Who among us would think the world a
sadder place because of the felling of a tree! The stumps stood even
with Agueda's shoulder, for Natalio, that African giant, was the axe-
man of the hacienda. His ringing strokes struck hip high. It was less
work to cut through the trunk some distance above its spreading
roots. There was no clearing up nor carrying away of branches or
limbs. With all their massive foliage, the branches were hacked from
the parent stem, and left to dry in the tropic sun. They were then
placed in great piles about the mother tree, lighted, and left to burn.
Sometimes these fallen denizens of the wood, whose life had seen
generations of puny men fade and wither, and other generations
spring up and die while they stood splendid and vigourous, refused
to be annihilated. The fallen trunk remained for years, proof of the
vandalism of man. More often, a long line of ashes marked the spot
where the giant had blazed, then smouldered sullenly, to become
wind-blown, intangible. This great woodland crematory having been
made ready by death for the life that was to spring up through its
vanquishment, the peons came with their machetes and dug the
graves in which the bulbs, teeming with quiescent life, were to be
planted, each sucker twelve feet from any one of its neighbors, there
to be warmed and nurtured in the bosom of Mother Earth. Because
exposed upon a windy hillside, the bulbs had been placed in their
graves head and sprouting end downward, and at the depth of ten
inches. This was a provision against hurricanes, which, with all their
power, find it difficult to uproot so securely planted a stalk.
And now the field which she had helped to "avita"—for one gives in
when the tide of circumstances flows too strong—the waste whose
seed-graves she had seen dug, whose bulbs she had seen buried
from sight, had suddenly become a field of life once more. Pale
green spears were springing up in every direction—a light, wonderful
green with a tinge of yellow. The spatulated leaves were
handsomest, Agueda thought, when spotted or marked with brown,
or a rich chocolate shade. In their tender infancy they were the
loveliest things on earth, she thought, as she ran about the damp,
hot hillside, comparing one with another; and as she again returned
to the path, she nearly stumbled against the ebony giant, who,
standing just at the edge of the field, was watching her.
"It is wonderful, Natalio," she said, "how quickly they have
sprouted." She smiled upward.
"Si, Señorit'," said Natalio, smiling down. "It is the early rains that
bring the life. Perhaps the good God may be thanked a little, too,
but it is the good soil, and the rains most of all."
He stooped his great height, and took some of the earth in his
fingers. "It is the caliche so the Señor says." He rubbed the
disintegrated gravelly mass between his fingers. Some of it
powdered away. The fine bits of stone that it contained dropped in a
faint patter upon his feet.
"I never heard the Señor say that," said Agueda, with the air of one
who would know what were the Señor's favourite convictions, "but
of course he knows, the Señor."
"Bieng," said Natalio. "It is certain that the Señor knows."
Agueda moved on up the hill. She felt, crunching beneath her feet,
the shells of the circular grub which had lost life and home in this
terrific holocaust.
"It seems hard," mused Agueda, "that some things must die that
other things may be created." She smiled as she said this. She need
not die that other things might live. It had no personal application
for her. At least it would not have for sixty or eighty years, and that
was a whole lifetime. She might not be glad to die even then!
Agueda had reached the summit of the hill. She turned to look back
at Natalio. He was standing gazing after her. When he saw her turn
he expanded his handsome lips into a smile, showing his white
teeth. Then he uncovered his head, and swept the ground with his
ragged Panama hat. He called; Agueda could not hear at first what
he said.
"Que es eso?" she called back in answer.
Natalio approached a few feet with his great strides.
"I asked if the Señorit' would not ride the bull?"
"Pablo is away," said Agueda. "I cannot go alone. The Señor will not
have me to ride the bull alone."
"El Caballo Castaño, Señorit'," said Natalio, suggestively,
approaching nearer.
"Would you saddle him, Natalio?" asked Agueda, thinking this an
excellent change of programme.
"It would give me pleasure, Señorit'," said Natalio.
Agueda turned and began to walk rapidly down the hill.
"The small man's saddle, Natalio," she called. "I will be ready in a
moment." Agueda ran down the hill, keeping ahead of the giant, and
sped across the potrero. She flew to her room. There lay the rose as
she had left it upon the chair, but she had no time for sentiment.
The horse would be at the door in a moment, and indeed, before
she had changed her skirt for the cotton riding garment that she
usually wore, and which our ladies have imported of late under the
name of a divided skirt, Natalio was at the steps. Agueda buckled on
her spur, and was out on the veranda in the twinkling of an eye.
Uncle Adan was coming up from the river. He saw her stand upon
the second step and throw her leg boy-fashion over the saddle, seize
the whip from Natalio, and canter away again toward the hill. To his
shout of "Where are you going?" she flung back the words, "To
Aneta's," and was off.
Her easy seat astride the animal gave her a sense of freedom and
independence. The top of the hill reached, she struck off toward
Troja, on the other side of which lived Aneta, at El Cuco. Agueda
galloped along the damp roads, and then clattered through the
streets of the quiet little West Indian town. Arrived upon its further
outskirts, she allowed the chestnut to walk, for he was warm and
tired. She was passing at the back of Escobeda's casa, through a
narrow lane shaded with coffee trees. The wall of the casa
descended abruptly to this lane, the garden being in front, facing the
broad camino. Agueda heard her name softly called. She halted and
looked towards the casa. A shutter just at the side of the balcony
moved almost imperceptibly, then was pushed open a trifle, and she
saw a face, the face of Raquel, the niece of Escobeda. Raquel had
her finger upon her lips. Agueda guided her horse near, in as
cautious a manner as could be. When she was well under the
opening, Raquel spoke again.
"It is Agueda, is it not? Agueda from San Isidro?"
Raquel whispered her words. Agueda, seeing that there was need
for secrecy, also let her voice fall lower than was usual.
"Yes," she smiled, "I am certainly Agueda from San Isidro."
"Ah! you happy girl," said Raquel, in a cautious tone, "to be riding
about alone." Agueda's head was almost on a level with Raquel's.
"I am a prisoner, Agueda," said Raquel. "My uncle has shut me up
here. He means to take me away in a short time. It's a dreadful
thing which is to happen. Can you carry a note for me, Agueda?"
"I will carry a note for you," said Agueda. "Is it ready, Señorita?"
"I will write it in a moment. Agueda, good girl, you know the
plantation of the Silencios, do you not? Palmacristi?"
"I can find it," said Agueda. "It is down by the sea. It is not much
out of my way."
"If it were miles and miles out of your way, Agueda, dear, you must
take my letter."
"Give it to me, then," said Agueda.
There was a noise inside the room, at the door of the chamber.
"Ride on to the clump of coffee bushes where the roads meet,"
whispered Raquel. "The fog will help hide you, too. I will drop the
note."
As she tried to guide the chestnut softly over the turf, Agueda heard
a loud call from within. It was a man's coarse voice. She heard
Raquel answer drowsily, "In a moment, uncle; I was just asleep.
Wait until I—"
Agueda halted for some minutes behind the concealment of the
coffee bushes. She grudged this delay, for she had still some
distance to travel, and must make a detour because of Raquel's
request. "But," she argued, "had I walked, I should have been much
longer on the way." She watched the window at the back of
Escobeda's house, then, presently, from the front, saw a man mount
and ride away in the opposite direction. Then, as she still awaited
the fluttering of the note, the shutter was flung wide, and an arm
encased in a yellow sleeve beckoned desperately. Agueda struck her
spur into the chestnut, and was soon under the window again.
"He has gone," said Raquel, "and I am locked in the house alone. All
the servants have gone to the fair."
"You can climb down," said Agueda. "It is not high."
"Where should I go then, Agueda?" asked Raquel. "No, he would
only bring me back. Now I will write my note, and I will ask you to
take it to Don Gil." As Raquel said this name her voice trembled. She
coloured all over her face.
"You are lovely that way," said Agueda. "What does he do to you,
Señorita?—the Señor Escobeda. Does he starve you? Does he ill
treat—I could tell the Señor Don Beltran—"
"You do not blush when you speak of him," said Raquel, who had
heard some rumours.
"I have no cause to blush," said Agueda, with dignity. "But come,
Señorita, the note!"
Raquel withdrew into the room. She scribbled a few words on a
piece of blue paper, folded it, and encased it in a long thin envelope.
This she sealed with a little pink wafer, on which were two turtle
doves with their bills quite close together. She leaned out and
handed the missive down to Agueda.
"Thank you, dear," she said. "I should like to kiss you."
"I should like much to have you," said Agueda. "Perhaps I can stand
up." Agueda spurred her horse closer under the window. She raised
herself as high as she could. The chestnut started.
"He will throw you," said Raquel. "I will lean out."
Raquel stretched her young form as far out of the window as
possible. She could just reach Agueda's forehead. She kissed her
gently.
"I thank you, Señorita," said Agueda. She felt the kiss upon her
forehead all the way to the plantation; it seemed like a benediction.
She did not reason out the cause of her feeling, but it was true that
no one of Raquel's class had ever kissed her before.
Agueda rode along her way with quick gait. The plantation of
Palmacristi was some miles farther on, and she wished still to see
Aneta. On her way toward Palmacristi, and as she mounted the
slope leading to the casa, she met no one. Arrived at that splendid
estate by the sea, she spurred her horse over the hill and round to
the counting-house. This was the place, she had heard, where the
Señor was usually to be found. She had seen the Señor at a
distance. She thought that she would know him.

At that same hour the Señor Don Gil Silencio-y-Estrada sat within his
counting-house. The counting-house was constructed of the boards
of the palm, the inner side plain, the outer side curved, as the tree
had curved. The bark had not been removed. The roof of the
building was also made of palm boards; it was thickly thatched with
yagua.
Since the days of the old Don Gil the finca had enlarged and
improved. The counting-house stood within its small enclosure, its
back against the side of the casa, and though it communicated with
the interior of the imposing mahogany mansion, it remained the
same palm-board counting-house—that is, to the outside world—
that the estate of Palmacristi had ever known.
Two tall palms stood like sentinels upon either side of the low step
before the doorway. The palm trees were dead. They had been
topped by no green plume of leaves since before the death of the
old Don Gil. Now, as then, the carpenter birds made their homes in
the decaying shaft. The round beak-made holes, from root to
treetop, disclosed numberless heads, if so much as a tap were given
the resounding stem of the palm.
No one wondered why Don Gil still used the ancient structure as a
counting-house. No one ever wondered at anything at Palmacristi;
everything was accepted with quiescence. "The good God wills it," a
shrug of the shoulders accompanying the remark, made alike, if a
tornado unroofed a house or a peon died of the wounds received at
the last garito.[2]
The changes which had taken place at Palmacristi had nothing to say
to the condition of the counting-house, or it to them, except that it
acceded, somewhat slowly in some cases, to the payment of bills.
Since his father's day Don Gil had added much to the estate. Upon
the right he had bought more than twenty caballerias from Don Luis
Salas—land which marched with his own to the seashore. This
included a tall headland, with a sand spit at its base, which pushed
itself a half mile out into the sea. This sand spit curved in a hook to
the left, and formed a pleasant and safe harbour for boating.
To the north of his inheritance Don Gil had taken in the old estates
of La Flor and Provedencia, and at the back of the casa, which
already stood high up on the slope, he had extended his possessions
over the crest of the hill. Had the original owner of Palmacristi
returned on a visit to earth, he would have found his old plantation
the center of a magnificent estate, with, however, the same shiftless,
careless ways of master and servant that had obtained in his time.
This would probably grow worse as his descendants succeeded each
other in ownership.
The casa was built upon a level, where the hill ceased to be a hill
just long enough to allow of a broad foundation for Don Gil's
improvements. At the edge of the veranda the hill sloped gently
again for the distance of a hundred yards, and then dropped in a
short but steep declivity to the sand beach.
The old habitation had been built entirely of palm boards, but in its
place, at the bidding of Don Gil, had arisen a new and more modern
erection, whose only material was mahogany. Pilotijos, escaleras,
ligazones, verandas, techos, all were hewn and formed of the fine
red mahogany. The boards were unpolished, it is true, but dark and
rich in tone. They made a cool interior, where, coming from the
white glare outside, body and eye alike were at once at rest. The
covering of the techos was the glazed tile of Italy. Perhaps one
should speak of the roofs as tejados, as they were covered with
tiles. This tiling proved a beacon by day, as it glittered in the blazing
light of the sun of the tropics.
Agueda guided her horse up the path between the two dead palm
trees, and rapped with the stock of her whip upon the counting-
house door, which stood partly open.
"Entra," was the reply. She rapped again.
"It is I who cannot enter, Señor," she called in her clear, young voice.
"I have not the time to dismount."
An inner door was opened and closed. A fine-looking young fellow
stepped across the intervening space and appeared upon the
threshold of the outer door. He raised his brows; he did not know
Agueda. Don Beltran made various pretexts for her absence when he
had visitors.
Agueda held out the note. It was crumpled and dusty from being
held in her hand.
"I am sorry," she said; "the day is hot, and my Castaño is not quiet."
Don Gil gazed with interest at the boyish-looking figure riding astride
the little chestnut. "What a handsome lad she would make!" he
thought. "And you are from—"
"It makes no difference for me. I bring a message."
Silencio took the note which she reached out to him.
"You will dismount and let me send for some fruit, some coffee?"
"I thank you, Señor, I must hasten; I am going to El Cuco."
"That is not so far," said Don Gil, smiling.
"No, but I then have to ride a long way back to—"
"To—?"
"To San Isidro."
"The Señorita takes roundabout ways. Is she then carrying
messages all about the country?"
"Oh, no, Señor," said Agueda, smiling frankly. "When I go back to
San Isidro I go to my home. I live there."
"Ah!" What was there imperceptible in Don Gil's tone? "You live
there? Is the Señorita perhaps the niece of the manager, Señor
Adan?"
"Si, Señor," answered Agueda, flushing hotly, she knew not why.
She wheeled Castaño and paced down between the palm trees.
"And you will not take pity on my loneliness?"
Don Gil was still smiling, but there was something new, something of
familiarity, it seemed to Agueda, in his tone.
"I cannot stop, Señor. A Dios!" she said, gravely.
As Agueda rode out of the enclosure the day seemed changed. Why
was it? She had been so happy before she had delivered the note!
Now she felt sad, depressed. The sun was still shining, though there
were occasional showers of rain, and the birds were still singing.
Nothing in nature had changed. Ah, stay! There was a cloud over
there, hanging low down above the sea. It was coming to the
westward, she thought. She hoped that it would come, and quickly.
She hoped that it would burst in rain upon her, and make her ride
for it, and struggle with it. Anything to drive away that unhappy
impression.
Had Silencio been asked what he had said or done to cause this
young girl to change suddenly from a thoughtless, happy creature to
one who felt that she had reason for uneasiness, he could not have
told. He had heard vague rumours of the girl, Adan's niece, who
lived over at San Isidro. But that he had allowed any such
impression to escape him in intonation or gesture he was quite
unaware. At all events, he was entirely oblivious of Agueda the
moment that she had ridden away, for he opened the little blue note
that she had brought, and was lost in its contents.

FOOTNOTE:
[2] Cock-fight.
 III
When Agueda left the Casa de Caboa she turned down the trocha
towards the sea. Although the sea was not far from San Isidro as the
crow flies, the dwellers at the hacienda rarely went there. In the first
place, there was the river to cross, and then the wood beyond the
river was filled with a thick, short growth of prickly pear. This sort of
underbrush was unpleasant to pull through. Don Beltran had tried to
buy it from Escobeda up at Troja, but Escobeda seemed to have
been born to annoy the human race in general, and Don Beltran and
Silencio in particular. He would not sell, and he would not cultivate,
so that the sea meadow, as they called it at San Isidro, was an
eyesore and a cause of heart-burning to Don Beltran.
Agueda chirruped to her horse, and was soon skirting the plantation
of Palmacristi. The chestnut was a pacer, and Agueda liked his single
foot, and kept him down to it at all hazards.
She felt as if she were in Nada's American chair, the motion was so
easy and pleasant. The beach was rather a new experience to the
chestnut, but after a little moment of hesitancy he started on with a
nod of the head.
"Ah!" said Agueda, with a laugh, "it is you, Castaño, who know that I
never lead you wrong."
She shook the bridle, and the horse put forth his best powers. They
took the wet sand just where the water had retreated but a little
while before. It was as hard and firm as the country road, but moist
and cool.
"How I should like to plunge into that sea," said Agueda to Castaño.
Castaño again nodded an acquiescent head. A salt-water bath was a
novelty to these comrades.
After a few moments of pacing, Agueda came to the sand spit which
ran out from the plantation into the sea. Here was the boat-house
which Don Gil had built, and Agueda noticed that it was placed upon
a high point, with ways leading down on either side into the water.
She looked wistfully at the boat-house. "How I should love to sail
upon that sea," thought Agueda. "No water, however high, could
frighten me." Then she recalled with a flash the flood which had
brought her happiness. She smiled faintly, for with the thought the
unpleasant feeling which Don Gil's words had called up returned, she
knew not why. Agueda was pacing towards the south. Upon her right
stood up tall and high the asta of Palmacristi, the staff from which
hung the lantern that, she had heard, sent forth its white ray each
night to warn the seafarers on that lonely coast.
"What harm for a ship to run on the sand," thought Agueda. "I have
heard that rocks are cruel. But the sand is soft. It need hurt no one."
She struck spurs to Castaño, and covered several miles before she
again drew rein. And now the bank grew high, and Agueda awoke to
the fact that she was alone upon the beach, screened from the eyes
of every one. Again the thought came to her of a bath in the sea,
and she was about to rein the chestnut in when she heard a shout
from the plateau above her head. She stopped, and tipping back her
straw hat, she looked upward. All that she could discover was a
mass of flowers in motion. "They are the air-plants, certainly," said
Agueda to herself, "but I never saw them to grow like that." She
looked to right and to left, but there was no human being in sight
along the yellow bank outlined by sand and overhanging weeds.
"Who calls me?" she cried aloud, holding her hair from her ears,
where the wind persisted in blowing it.
"Caramba, muchacho! Can you not see who it is? It is I, Gremo."
There was a violent agitation of the mass of blooms, and Agueda
now perceived that a head was shaking out its words from the
centre of this woodland extravaganza.
"I can hardly see you, Gremo," said Agueda. "What do you want
with me, Gremo?"
"And must I make brains for every muchacho[3] between here and
the Port of Entry? Do you not know there are the quicksands just
beyond?"
"Quicksands, Gremo! Yes, I had heard of quicksands, but I did not
think them here. Can I get up the bank, Gremo?"
"No," answered Gremo, from his flower screen. "You must ride back
a long way." He wheeled suddenly toward the south—at least, the
mass of flowers wheeled, and a hand was stretched forth from the
centre. A finger pointed along the sand. Agueda turned in the saddle
and shaded her eyes again.
"What is it, Gremo?" she asked. "I see nothing."
"Then you do not see that small thing over which the vultures
hover?"
"I see the vultures, certainly," said Agueda. "Some bit of fish,
perhaps."
"No bit of fish or fowl, but foul flesh, if you will, hombre. It is the
hand of a Señor, muchacho."
"The hand of a Señor? And what is the hand of a Señor doing, lying
along there on the shore?"
"It lies there because it cannot get loose. Caramba, muchacho! Do I
not know?"
"Cannot get loose from what?" asked Agueda, still puzzled.
"From the Señor himself, muchachito. He lies below there, and his
good horse with him. Do you not see a hoof just over beyond where
the big bird lights?"
Agueda turned pale. She had never been near such death before.
Nada had passed peacefully away with the sacred wafer upon her
lips, and in her ears the good padre's words of forgiveness for all her
sins, of which Agueda was sure she had committed none. Hers was
a sweet, calm, sad death. One thought of it with relief and hope, but
this was tragedy. There, along the beach, beneath the smiling sand,
whose grains glistened in a million, million sparkles, lay the bodies of
horse and rider, overtaken by this placid sea.
"I suppose he was a stranger," said Agueda. "There was no one to
warn him." Suddenly she felt faint. A strong whiff of air reached her
from the direction of the birds. She turned the chestnut rapidly, and
struck the spur to his side.
"Wait, Gremo, wait!" she cried, "I am coming! Do not leave me here
alone." The chestnut paced as never horse paced before, and after a
few minutes Agueda found a little cleft in the bank where a stream
trickled down. Into this opening she guided Castaño, and with spur
and whip aided him in his scramble up the bank. She galloped
southward again, and neared the place where Gremo stood. She was
guided by the mass of bloom. As she advanced she saw the
blossoms shaking, but as yet perceived nothing human. Tales of the
forest suddenly came back to her. Could it be that this was a
woodland spirit, who had lured her here to this high headland, to
throw her over the cliff again to keep company with the dead man
yonder and the birds of prey? She had half turned her horse, when
Gremo, seeing her plan, thrust himself further from his gorgeous
environment.
"Ah! It is the little Agueda! Do not be afraid, Agueda, little Señorita.
It is I, Gremo."
Agueda's cheek had not as yet regained its colour.
"It is Gremo, muchachito."
"What terrible thing is that down there, Gremo? And to see you
looking like this frightened me!"
It was a curious sight which met Agueda's eyes. Gremo, the little
yellow keeper of Los Santos light, was standing not far from his
signal pole. He held a staff in each hand. The staves were crooked
and uneven. They were covered with bark, and scraggy bits of moss
hung from them here and there. The strange thing about them was
that each blossomed like the prophet's rod. At the top of the right-
hand staff there shot out a splendid orange-coloured flower, with
velvety oval-shaped leaves. Near the top of the left-hand staff was a
pale pink blossom, large also, not wilted, as plucked flowers are apt
to be, but firm and fresh. But these were not all the prophet's rods
which Gremo carried. Across his back was slung an old canvas stool,
opened to its fullest extent, and laid lengthwise across this were
many more ragged staves, and on each and all of them a flower of
some shade or colour bloomed. Then there were branches held
under his arms, whose protruding ends blossomed in Agueda's very
face, and quite enclosed the yellow countenance of Gremo. The
glossy green of the leaves surrounding each bloom so concealed
Gremo that he was lost in his vari-coloured burden of loveliness.
"So it is really you, Gremo! Do they smell sweet, those air-plants?"
Gremo shifted from one leg to the other. One of Gremo's legs was
shorter than the other. He generally settled down on the short one
to argue. When he was indignant he raised himself upon his long leg
and hurled defiance from the elevation.
The mass of bloom seemed to exhale a delicate aroma. So
evanescent was it that Gremo often said to himself, "Have they any
scent after all?" And then, in a moment, a breeze blew from left to
right, across the open calix of each delicate flower, and Gremo said,
"How sweet they are!"
"I sometimes think they are the sweetest things on God's earth,"
said Gremo. "That is, when the Señorita is not by," he added,
remembering that his grandfather had brought some veneer from
old Spain; "and then again I ask myself, is there any perfume at all?"
"Oh, now I smell it, Gremo!" said Agueda, sniffing up her straight
little nose. "Now I smell it! It is delicious!"
"It is better than the perfume down below there," said Gremo, with
a grimace. Agueda turned pale again.
"And what do you do with them, Gremo?" asked she.
"I take them to the Port of Entry, Señorita. I get good payment
there. Sometimes a half-dollar, Mex. They stick them in the earth.
They last a long, long time."
"Were you going there when you called me from—from—down
there?"
"Si, Señorita. I was walking along the bank. I had just come from my
casa"—Gremo gestured backward with a dignified wave of the hand
—"when I heard El Castaño's hoofs on the hard sand there below."
He turned and looked along the beach to where the noisome birds
hovered. "I was too late to warn the Señor. Had I been here, I
should even have laid down my plants and have run to the edge of
the cliff"—Gremo jerked his head towards the humped-up pit of
sand—"and called, 'Olá! Porque hace Usted eso? It is Gremo who
has the kind heart, muchacho.'"
"I am not a boy, Gremo," said Agueda, glancing down at her riding
costume.
"It is the same to me, Señorita," said Gremo, who in common with
his fellows had but one gender of speech.
Agueda was looking at the hand which thrust itself out from the
sand of the shore. It seemed as if the fingers beckoned. She
shuddered.
"They should put up a sign," she said, quickly. "I shall tell the Señor
Don Beltran. He will put up a notice—a warning."
"Caramba, hombre! And why must you interfere? No people in this
part will go that way. They all know the danger as well as the birds.
I live here in this part. Why not leave it to me?"
"But will you, Gremo?"
"What? Put up the sign? I most certainly shall, Señorita. Some day
when I have not the air-plants to gather, or the lanterna to clean, or
when I am not down with the calentura, or there is no fair at Haldez,
or no cock-fight at Saltona. The Señorita does not know how long I
have thought of this—I, Gremo! Why, as long ago as when the Señor
Don Gil bought the sand spit I had the board prepared. That is now
going on four years, if I count aright. I told the Señor Don Gil that I
would get a board, and I have."
"He thinks it there now, I am sure," said Agueda.
"Well, well! He may, he may, our Don Gil! I am not disputing it,
Señorita. I am only waiting for the padre to come and put the letters
on it."
"Have you told him, Gremo?" said Agueda, bending forward
anxiously.
"Caramba, Señorita!" said Gremo, raising up on his long leg, "where
do you suppose I am to find the time to tell the padre? If I should
take a half-day from my work when I am at San Isidro, and walk
over to the bodega, the padre might be away at the cock-fight at
Saltona, or the christening at Haldez. The Don Beltran is a gentle
hombre, but he would not pay me for half a day when I did not earn
it. If I could know when the padre was at home, I would go, most
certainly."
"You must have seen him many times in the last three years," said
Agueda.
"I will not deny that I have seen the padre," answered Gremo, rising
angrily on the tips of his knotted brown toes. "But would you have
me disturb a man like our padre when he was watching the
shoemaker's black cock from Troja, to see if his spurs were as long
as the spurs of the cock of Corndeau?—that vagamundo!"
Agueda reined Castaño round, so that his head pointed in the
general direction of the bodega, as well as homeward.
"I can tell the padre, Gremo," she said, and then added with
determination, "It must not be left another day."
Gremo settled down upon his short leg.
"Now, Señorita," he said argumentatively, "do not interfere. It is I
that have this matter well within my grasp. There is no one coming
this way to-day—along the beach, I mean."
"How do you know, Gremo?" questioned Agueda.
Gremo shrugged his shoulders.
"It is not likely, muchacho. Our own people never come that way,
and there are so few strangers—not three in as many years. We
cannot now help the Señor who lies there, can we, Señorita?"
"No," said Agueda, sadly; "but we can prevent—"
"Leave it to me, Señorita. I promise that I will attend to it to-
morrow. I—"
"And why not to-day?"
"Because, you see, muchacho, I must take the air-plants to the Port
of Entry. I am on my way there now. I but stopped to warn the
Señorita, and I pay well for my kindness. Now I shall not be able to
return to-night. As the Señorita has detained me all this long while,
will she be so good as to stop at my casa and tell Marianna
Romando to come over and light the lantern on the signal-staff at an
early hour? This, you know, is my lighthouse, little 'Gueda. This is
Los Santos."
"Have I come as far as Los Santos head?" asked the girl.
Agueda looked upwards at the place where the red lantern hung
against the staff.
"How can a woman climb up there?" she said.
"She will bring the ladder, the Marianna Romando," said Gremo,
moving a step onwards.
"I do not think I know Marianna Romando. Is she your wife,
Gremo?"
"Well, so, so," answered Gremo. "But she will do very well to light
the lantern all the same."
Agueda sat her horse, lost in thought. When she raised her eyes
nothing was to be seen of Gremo. An ambulating mass of bloom,
some distance along on the top of the sea bank, told her that he
was well on his way toward the Port of Entry. This was the best way,
Gremo considered, to put an end to discussion.
Agueda did not know just where the casa of the light-keeper lay.
Seeing that a well-worn path entered the bushes just there, she
turned her horse's head and pushed into the tall undergrowth. After
a few moments she came out upon a well-defined footway. Her path
led her through acres of mompoja trees, whose great spreading
spatules shaded her from the scorching sun. She had descended a
little below the hill, and once out of the fresh trade breeze, began to
feel the heat. She took off her hat as she rode, and fanned herself.
Five or six minutes of Castaño's walking brought her to a hut; this
hut was placed at a point where three paths met. It stood in a sort
of hollow, where the moisture from the late rains had settled upon
the clay soil. The hut was thatched with yagua. It was so small that,
Agueda argued, there could be but one room. There was a stone
before the doorway sunk deep in the mud. Before the opening,
where the door should be, hung a curtain of bull's hide. A long
ladder stood against the house. Its topmost rung was at least an
entire story in height above the roof, and Agueda wondered why it
was needed there. The only signs of life about the place were three
or four withered hens, which ran screaming, with wobbling bodies
and thin necks stretched forward, at the approach of the stranger.
Their screams brought a yellow woman to the door. If Gremo looked
like a withered apple, this was his feminine counterpart. Her one
garment appeared to be quite out of place. It seemed as if there
could be nothing improper in such a creature going about as she
was created. The slits in the faded cotton gown were more
suggestive than utter nakedness would have been. This person
nodded at the chickens where they were disappearing in the bush.
"They are as good as any watch-dog," said she. "There is no use of
thieves coming here."
Agueda rode close.
"I am not a thief," said Agueda. "Can you tell me where is the casa
of Gremo, the light-keeper?"
"And where but here in this very spot?" said the piece of parchment,
smiling a toothless smile and showing a fine array of gums. "But had
you said the casa of Marianna Romando, you would have come
nearer the truth."
Agueda had not expected the casa of which Gremo spoke with such
pride to look like this, or to belong to some one else.
"Well, then, I have come with a message from your hus—from
Gremo."
"The Señorita will get off her horse and come in? What will the
Señorita have? Some bread, an egg—a little ching-ching?"
The woman smiled pleasantly all the time that she was speaking.
Agueda had difficulty in understanding her, for the entire absence of
teeth caused her lips to cling together, so that she articulated with
difficulty. Still she smiled. Agueda shook her head at the hospitable
words.
"I have no time, gracias, Señora. You will see that I have been wet
with the showers," she said; "and I have been delayed twice already.
Gremo asked me to tell you that he would come to the Port of Entry
too late to return and light the lantern. He asks that you will do it for
him."
For answer the woman hurriedly pulled aside the bull's-hide curtain
and entered the hut. She reappeared in a moment with an old straw
hat on her head. She was lifting up her skirt as she came, and tying
round her waist a petticoat of some faded grey stuff. Her face had
changed. She smiled no longer.
"It is that fat wife of the inn-keeper at the sign of the 'Navío
Mercante.'[4] She it is who takes my Gremo from me." She entered
the hut again, and this time reappeared with a coarse pair of native
shoes. She seated herself in the doorway, her feet on the damp
stone, and busily began to put on the shoes, her tongue keeping her
fingers in countenance.
"As if I did not know why my Gremo goes to the Port of Entry! He
will sit in the doorway all the day! She will give him of the pink rum!
He will spend all the pesos he has made! His plants will wither! Oh,
yes, it is that fat Posadera who has got hold of my Gremo."
Agueda turned her horse's head.
"How do I go on from here?" she asked.
"Where is the Señorita going?"
"To San Isidro, but first to El—"
"Aaaaiiiieee!" said the woman, standing in the now laced shoes,
arms akimbo. "So this is Don Beltran's little lady?"
Agueda flushed.
"I live with my uncle, the Señor Adan, at San Isidro." She pushed
into the undergrowth.
"The Señora is going wrong," said the woman. "Señorita," said
Agueda, sharply, correcting the word. "Which way, then?"
Getting no answer, she turned again. She now saw that the woman
had gone to the side of the house and was taking the long ladder
from its position against the wall. She bent her back and settled it
upon her shoulders. Agueda looked on in astonishment while this
frail creature fitted her back to so awkward a burden. Marianna
Romando looked up sidewise from under the rungs.
"I go to light the señale now," she said. "It may burn all day, for me.
What cares Marianna Romando? Government must pay. Then, when
it is lighted I shall hide the ladder among the mompoja trees. He did
not dare to tell me that he would remain away. He knows that I do
not like that fat wife of the inn-keeper. I shall lead him home by the
ear at about four o'clock of the morning. There are ghosts in the
mompoja patch, but they will not appear to two."
All through this discourse Marianna Romando had not raised her
voice. She smiled as if she considered the weaknesses of Gremo
amiable ones. She started after him as a mother would go in search
of a straying child; like a guardian who would protect a weak brother
from himself.
"I have only this to say to you, Señorita," she called after Agueda,
turning so that the ladder swished through the low bushes, cutting
off some of the tops of the tall weeds, both before and behind her.
"Keep the Señor well in hand. When they go away like that, no one
knows whom they may be going after."
Agueda closed her ears. She did not wish to hear that which her
senses had perforce caught. She pushed along the path that
Marianna Romando had indicated, and in twenty minutes saw the
white palings of Don Mateo's little plantation, El Cuco.

FOOTNOTES:
[3] Lad.
[4] Merchant ship.
 IV
When Raquel had given Agueda the note and the kiss, and had seen
her ride rapidly away, she closed the shutter. She made the room as
dark as possible. She could not bear to have the sun shine on a girl
who had written to a man to come to her succour. It could mean
nothing less than marriage, and it was as if she had offered it. But
what else remained for her but to appeal to Don Gil? If the few
words that he had spoken meant anything, they meant love. If the
beating of her heart, when she caught ever so distant a glimpse of
him, meant anything, it meant love. She had received a note from
him only a week back. She would read it again. Her uncle had
searched her room only yesterday for letters, and she was thankful
that she had had the forethought to conceal Silencio's missive where
he would not discover it. He had ordered old Ana to search the girl's
dresses, and Ana, with moist eyes and tender words, had carried out
Escobeda's instructions. She had found nothing, and so had told the
Señor Escobeda.
"And when does the child get a chance to receive notes from the
Señores?" asked Ana, indignant that her charge should be
suspected. It was the reflection upon herself, also, that galled her. "I
guarded her mother; I can guard her, Señor," said the old woman,
with dignity.
"Do you not know that the young of our nation are fire and tow?"
snarled Escobeda. "I shall put it out of her power to deceive me
longer."
With that he had flung out of the casa and ridden away. It was then
that Raquel had beckoned to Agueda, where she loitered under the
shelter of the coffee bushes. After Agueda had gone, Raquel seated
herself upon a little stool which had been hers from childhood. She
raised one foot to her knee, took the heel in her hand, and drew off
the slipper. Some small pegs had pressed through and had made
little indentations in the tender foot. But between the pegs and the
stocking was a thick piece of paper, whose folds protected the skin.
She had just removed it when the door opened, and Ana entered.
Raquel started and seemed confused for a moment.
"You frightened me, Ana," said Raquel. "I thought that you had gone
to the fair. So I told—"
"You told? And whom did you have to tell, Señorita?"
"I told my uncle. He was here but now. Oh! dear Ana, I am so tired
of this hot house. I long for the woods. When do you think that he
will let me go to the forest again?"
Ana drew the girl toward her. Her lips trembled.
"I am as sorry as you can be, muchachita; but what can I do? What
is that paper that you hold in your hand, Raquel?"
Raquel blushed crimson. Fortunately Ana's eyes were fixed upon the
paper.
"I had it folded in my shoe," said Raquel. She threw the paper in the
scrap basket as she spoke. "See, Ana." She held up the slipper.
"Look at those pegs! They have pushed through, and my heel is
really lame. I can hardly walk." Raquel limped round the room to
show Ana what suffering was hers, keeping her back always to the
scrap-basket. "If he would allow me to go to the town and buy some
shoes!" said Raquel—Ana's espionage having created the deceit
whose prophylactic she would be.
"You had better put on your slipper," said the prudent Ana. "You will
wear out your stockings else."
"But how can I put on my slipper with those pegs in the heel?"
asked Raquel.
"You had the paper."
"It was punched full of holes."
"Let me see it," said Ana.
"I threw it away," said Raquel. "Get me another piece of paper, for
the love of God, dear Ana. My uncle does not allow me even a
journal. I am indeed in prison."
Ana arose.
"I will take the scrap-basket with me," she said.
"Not until you have brought the paper, Ana. I shall tear up some
other pieces."
When Ana had closed the door Raquel pounced upon the waste-
basket. She took the folded paper from the top of the few scraps
lying there. This she opened, pulling it apart with difficulty, for the
pegs had punched the layers together, as if they had been sewn with
a needle. She spread the paper upon her knee, but first ran to the
door and called, "Ana, bring a piece of the cotton wool, also, I beg
of you."
"That will keep her longer," said Raquel, smiling. She spoke aloud as
lonely creatures often do. "She must hunt for that, I know." She
heard Ana pulling out bureau drawers, and sat down again to read
her letter.

"Dearest Señorita," it ran. "I hear that you are unhappy. What
can I do? I hear that you are going away. Do not go, for the
love of God, without letting me know.
Your faithful servant, G."

"I have let you know, Gil," she said. "I am not going away, but I am
unhappy. I am a prisoner. I wonder if you will save me?" Ana's heavy
tread was heard along the corridor. Raquel hastily thrust the note
within the bosom of her dress. When the cotton had been adjusted
and the slipper replaced, Ana took up the scrap-basket.
"Dear Ana, stay a little while. I am so lonely. Don't you think he
would let me sit on the veranda?"
"He would let you go anywhere if you would promise not to speak to
the Señor Silencio," said Ana.
"I will never promise that, Ana," said Raquel, with a compression of
the lips.
She laid her head down on Ana's shoulder.
"I am so lonely," she said. The tears welled over from the childish
eyes. The lips quivered. "I wonder how it feels, Ana, to have a
mother." Ana's eyes were moist, too, but she repressed any show of
feeling. Had not the Señor Escobeda ordered her to do so, and was
not his will her daily rule?
Suddenly Raquel started—her hearing made sensitive by fear.
"I hear him coming, Ana," she said.
"You could not hear him, sweet; he has gone over to see the Señor
Anecito Rojas."
"That dreadful man!" Raquel shuddered. "Why does he wish to see
the Señor Anecito Rojas?"
"I do not know, Señorita." Ana shook her head pitifully. It seemed as
if she might tell something if she would.
Suddenly she strained her arms round the girl.
"Raquel! Raquel!" she said, "promise me that you will sometimes
think of me. That you will love me if we are separated. That if you
can, if you have the power, you will send for me—"
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