of the garden. He must
have been there all the night. He is acting queerly. He is pale; his
cheeks are more sunken than ever. There is something wrong with him. I
can't make it out. It is a mystery. Suppose you ask him?"

"Not I. I've enough to bother myself about. Vanamee is crazy in the
head. Some morning he will turn up missing again, and drop out of sight
for another three years. Best let him alone, Sarria. He's a crank. How
is that greaser of yours up on Osterman's stock range?"

"Ah, the poor fellow--the poor fellow," returned the other, the tears
coming to his eyes. "He died this morning--as you might say, in my arms,
painfully, but in the faith, in the faith. A good fellow."

"A lazy, cattle-stealing, knife-in-his-boot Dago."

"You misjudge him. A really good fellow on better acquaintance."

Annixter grunted scornfully. Sarria's kindness and good-will toward the
most outrageous reprobates of the ranches was proverbial. He practically
supported some half-dozen families that lived in forgotten cabins, lost
and all but inaccessible, in the far corners of stock range and
canyon. This particular greaser was the laziest, the dirtiest, the most
worthless of the lot. But in Sarria's mind, the lout was an object of
affection, sincere, unquestioning. Thrice a week the priest, with a
basket of provisions--cold ham, a bottle of wine, olives, loaves of
bread, even a chicken or two--toiled over the interminable stretch of
country between the Mission and his cabin. Of late, during the rascal's
sickness, these visits had been almost daily. Hardly once did the priest
leave the bedside that he did not slip a half-dollar into the palm of
his wife or oldest daughter. And this was but one case out of many.

His kindliness toward animals was the same. A horde of mange-corroded
curs lived off his bounty, wolfish, ungrateful, often marking him with
their teeth, yet never knowing the meaning of a harsh word. A burro,
over-fed, lazy, incorrigible, browsed on the hill back of the Mission,
obstinately refusing to be harnessed to Sarria's little cart, squealing
and biting whenever the attempt was made; and the priest suffered him,
submitting to his humour, inventing excuses for him, alleging that the
burro was foundered, or was in need of shoes, or was feeble from extreme
age. The two peacocks, magnificent, proud, cold-hearted, resenting all
familiarity, he served with the timorous, apologetic affection of a
queen's lady-in-waiting, r