es, dreams!--you understand--dreams! And for this
she leaves her occupations, and comes to gossip here! Come," he
continued, steadily working himself into a passion, "come, enough of
this! Get you gone!--you, and Pepita, and Andreas, and Victor--all of
you--back to your duty. Away! Am I not master here? Off! I say!"

There was no mistaking the rising anger of his voice. The cowed group
rose in a frightened way and disappeared one by one silently through
the labyrinth. Pereo waited until the last had vanished, and then,
cramming his stiff sombrero over his eyes with an ejaculation, brushed
his way through the shrubbery in the direction of the stables.

Later, when the full glory of the midnight moon had put out every
straggling light in the great house; when the long veranda slept in
massive bars of shadow, and even the tradewinds were hushed to repose,
Pereo silently issued from the stable-yard in vaquero's dress, mounted
and caparisoned. Picking his way cautiously along the turf-bordered
edge of the gravel path, he noiselessly reached a gate that led to the
lane. Walking his spirited mustang with difficulty until the house had
at last disappeared in the intervening foliage, he turned with an easy
canter into a border bridle-path that seemed to lead to the canada. In
a quarter of an hour he had reached a low amphitheatre of meadows, shut
in a half circle of grassy treeless hills.

Here, putting spurs to his horse, he entered upon a singular exercise.
Twice he made a circuit of the meadow at a wild gallop, with flying
serape and loosened rein, and twice returned. The third time his speed
increased; the ground seemed to stream from under him; in the distance
the limbs of his steed became invisible in their furious action, and,
lying low forward on his mustang's neck, man and horse passed like an
arrowy bolt around the circle. Then something like a light ring of
smoke up-curved from the saddle before him, and, slowly uncoiling
itself in mid air, dropped gently to the ground as he passed. Again,
and once again, the shadowy coil sped upward and onward, slowly
detaching its snaky rings with a weird deliberation that was in strange
contrast to the impetuous onset of the rider, and yet seemed a part of
his fury. And then turning, Pereo trotted gently to the centre of the
circle.

Here he divested himself of his serape, and, securing it in a
cylindrical roll, placed it upright on the ground and once more sped
aw