uch an absurd assumption of his old "top-lofty"
manner that Jessica laughed even while she hastened to put on the tiny
porringer and seek the meal. The little oil stove blazed merrily, and
so deft was she that, in a very few minutes more, she had a dish of
the steaming mush beside the cot and had thinned a cup of condensed
milk with which to make it the more palatable. Sugar there was in
plenty, for Pedro had loved sweets; so that nothing was wanted, save
appetite, to render the repast all that was desirable; yet when it was
quite ready Antonio could not take it.

The pain had returned and with added intensity; and it was due to that
fact that he no longer delayed the confession he had sent for her to
hear.

"Hark! Behold! I talk."

"Yes, Antonio, I'm listening."

"Well, I--how begin? It is a story long, not pleasant."

"Wait. Open your mouth and I will feed you. Yes, do."

His black eyes stared at her, astonished. In her place had anybody
done him the ill that he had done her, he would have let his enemy
starve and have rejoiced at a suffering well deserved. But this
child--he wished she would turn her face away, and not look upon him
with that innocent compassion. She was too like her dead father, and
his one best friend; whom in life he had really loved and in death had
not scrupled to despoil.

"Come, Antonio, eat. Afterward you'll be stronger to talk," she said,
as coaxingly as if he had been her little brother, Ned; and thus
persuaded, he opened his mouth and received the morsel she forced upon
him. Thus it continued; she feeding, he resting and with halting
eagerness relating the story of his own misdeeds.

"For I must go to pay the price. Si. But the poor lad, my half-wit
brother Ferd, ugly, sinful, desolate--he will be left alone. Is it
not? For him, if I restore all, there may still be kindness and a home
at Sobrante, that should all be his--if----"

"No, Antonio; you know better. That is a poor, foolish notion that has
been put into your head. You know; for Mr. Hale, who is a lawyer and
understands everything like that, told you and us that you hadn't a
bit of right to a bit of land anywhere in this world. Unless, indeed,
you may have bought it since that little while ago in Los Angeles. And
if you have, where did you get the money?"

"Lo dicho dicho," he muttered the Spanish phrase: "What I have said I
have said," and sighed profoundly, as one hopelessly aggrieved.

Jessica lost her temper. She