ed now;
all was as quiet as the sleeping fountain, as silent and mystery-filled
as the desert itself. Had Roderick Norton seen more than she? Did he
know who had been out there? Was here the beginning of some further
sinister outgrowth of the lawlessness of Kid Rickard? of the animosity
of Jim Galloway? Was she presently to see Norton himself slipping into
the patio from the other side, was she again to hear the rattle of
pistol-shots? He had asked that she say nothing; she had
unhesitatingly given him her promise. Had she so unquestioningly done
as he had requested because he was the sheriff who represented the law?
or because he was Roderick Norton who stood for fine, upstanding
manhood? . . . Again she felt Florence Engle's eyes fixed upon her.

"Florence is prepared at the beginning to dislike me," she thought.
"Why? Just because I walked with him from the hotel?"

In the heat of an argument with Mrs. Engle there came an interruption.
The banker's wife was insisting that Virginia "do the only sensible
thing in the world," that she accept a home under the Engle roof,
occupying the room already made ready for her. Virginia, warmed by the
cordial invitation, while deeply grateful, felt that she had no right
to accept. She had come to San Juan to make her own way; she had no
claim upon the hospitality of her kinswoman, certainly no such claim as
was implied now. Besides, there was Elmer Page. Her brother was
coming to join her to-morrow or the next day, and as soon as it could
be arranged they would take a house all by themselves, or if that
proved impossible, would have a suite at the hotel. At the moment when
it seemed that a deadlock had come between Mrs. Engle's eagerness to
mother her cousin's daughter and Virginia's inborn sense of
independence, the interruption came.

It arrived in the form of a boy of ten or twelve, a ragged, scantily
clothed, swarthy youngster, rubbing a great toe against a bare leg
while from the front door he announced that Ignacio Chavez was sick,
that he had eaten something _muy malo_, that he had pains and that he
prayed that the doctor cure him.

Patten grunted his disgust.

"Tell him to wait," he said briefly. And, in explanation to the
others: "There's nothing the matter with him. I saw him on the street
just before I came. And wasn't he ringing his bell not fifteen minutes
ago?"

But the boy had not completed his message. Ignacio was sick and did
not wish to di