for him to speak
of her, before I should say anything of my visit to Carquinez Springs.
I hurried through my ablutions in the hot water, brought in a bronze jar
on the head of the centenarian handmaid; and even while I was smiling
over Enriquez's caution regarding this aged Ruth, I felt I was getting
nervous to hear his news.

I found him in his sitting-room, or study,--a long, low apartment with
small, deep windows like embrasures in the outer adobe wall, but glazed
in lightly upon the veranda. He was sitting quite abstractedly, with a
pen in his hand, before a table, on which a number of sealed envelopes
were lying. He looked SO formal and methodical for Enriquez.

"You like the old casa, Pancho?" he said in reply to my praise of its
studious and monastic gloom. "Well, my leetle brother, some day that is
fair--who knows?--it may be at your disposicion; not of our politeness,
but of a truth, friend Pancho. For, if I leave it to my wife"--it was
the first time he had spoken of her--"for my leetle child," he added
quickly, "I shall put in a bond, an obligacion, that my friend Pancho
shall come and go as he will."

"The Saltillos are a long-lived race," I laughed. "I shall be a
gray-haired man, with a house and family of my own by that time." But I
did not like the way he had spoken.

"Quien sabe?" he only said, dismissing the question with the national
gesture. After a moment he added: "I shall tell you something that is
strrange, so strrange that you shall say, like the banker say, 'Thees
Enriquez, he ees off his head; he ees a crank, a lunatico;' but it ees a
FACT; believe me, I have said!"

He rose, and, going to the end of the room, opened a door. It showed
a pretty little room, femininely arranged in Mrs. Saltillo's refined
taste. "Eet is pretty; eet is the room of my wife. Bueno! attend me
now." He closed the door, and walked back to the table. "I have sit here
and write when the earthquake arrive. I have feel the shock, the grind
of the walls on themselves, the tremor, the stagger, and--that--door--he
swing open!"

"The door?" I said, with a smile that I felt was ghastly.

"Comprehend me," he said quickly; "it ees not THAT which ees strrange.
The wall lift, the lock slip, the door he fell open; it is frequent; it
comes so ever when the earthquake come. But eet is not my wife's room
I see; it is ANOTHER ROOM, a room I know not. My wife Urania, she stand
there, of a fear, of a tremble; she grasp, she cling