ture Mrs. McMahan.'

"But on the next evening, when the music was playing loudest at
the Alcade Zamora's _baile_, into the room steps Judson Tate in
new white linen clothes as if he were the biggest man in the whole
nation, which he was.

"Some of the musicians jumped off the key when they saw my face, and
one or two of the timidest senoritas let out a screech or two. But
up prances the alcalde and almost wipes the dust off my shoes with
his forehead. No mere good looks could have won me that sensational
entrance.

"'I hear much, Senor Zamora,' says I, 'of the charm of your
daughter. It would give me great pleasure to be presented to her.'

"There were about six dozen willow rocking-chairs, with pink tidies
tied on to them, arranged against the walls. In one of them sat
Senorita Anabela in white Swiss and red slippers, with pearls and
fireflies in her hair. Fergus was at the other end of the room
trying to break away from two maroons and a claybank girl.

"The alcalde leads me up to Anabela and presents me. When she took
the first look at my face she dropped her fan and nearly turned her
chair over from the shock. But I'm used to that.

"I sat down by her, and began to talk. When she heard me speak she
jumped, and her eyes got as big as alligator pears. She couldn't
strike a balance between the tones of my voice and face I carried.
But I kept on talking in the key of C, which is the ladies' key; and
presently she sat still in her chair and a dreamy look came into her
eyes. She was coming my way. She knew of Judson Tate, and what a
big man he was, and the big things he had done; and that was in my
favour. But, of course, it was some shock to her to find out that I
was not the pretty man that had been pointed out to her as the great
Judson. And then I took the Spanish language, which is better than
English for certain purposes, and played on it like a harp of a
thousand strings. I ranged from the second G below the staff up to
F-sharp above it. I set my voice to poetry, art, romance, flowers,
and moonlight. I repeated some of the verses that I had murmured to
her in the dark at her window; and I knew from a sudden soft sparkle
in her eye that she recognized in my voice the tones of her midnight
mysterious wooer.

"Anyhow, I had Fergus McMahan going. Oh, the vocal is the true
art--no doubt about that. Handsome is as handsome palavers. That's
the renovated proverb.

"I took Senorita Anabela for a walk in the lemo