noons and evenings busied among his cousin's books with equally
lawless and undisciplined independence. The easy-going Don Juan, it is
true, attempted to make good his rash promise to teach the boy Spanish,
and actually set him a few tasks; but in a few weeks the quick-witted
Clarence acquired such a colloquial proficiency from his casual
acquaintance with vaqueros and small traders that he was glad to
leave the matter in his young kinsman's hands. Again, by one of those
illogical sequences which make a lifelong reputation depend upon a
single trivial act, Clarence's social status was settled forever at El
Refugio Rancho by his picturesque diversion of Flynn's parting gift. The
grateful peon to whom the boy had scornfully tossed the coin repeated
the act, gesture, and spirit of the scene to his companion, and Don
Juan's unknown and youthful relation was at once recognized as hijo
de la familia, and undeniably a hidalgo born and bred. But in the
more vivid imagination of feminine El Refugio the incident reached its
highest poetic form. "It is true, Mother of God," said Chucha of the
Mill; "it was Domingo who himself relates it as it were the Creed. When
the American escort had arrived with the young gentleman, this escort,
look you, being not of the same quality, he is departing again without a
word of permission. Comes to him at this moment my little hidalgo. 'You
have yourself forgotten to take from me your demission,' he said. This
escort, thinking to make his peace with a mere muchacho, gives to him a
gold piece of twenty pesos. The little hidalgo has taken it SO, and
with the words, 'Ah! you would make of me your almoner to my cousin's
people,' has given it at the moment to Domingo, and with a grace and
fire admirable." But it is certain that Clarence's singular simplicity
and truthfulness, a faculty of being picturesquely indolent in a way
that suggested a dreamy abstraction of mind rather than any vulgar
tendency to bodily ease and comfort, and possibly the fact that he was
a good horseman, made him a popular hero at El Refugio. At the end of
three years Don Juan found that this inexperienced and apparently idle
boy of fourteen knew more of the practical ruling of the rancho than he
did himself; also that this unlettered young rustic had devoured nearly
all the books in his library with boyish recklessness of digestion.
He found, too, that in spite of his singular independence of action,
Clarence was possessed of an