rting words,
all unconscious of Loring, who had stepped aside to give them room and
so found himself close to little Pancha, lost to everybody in the
desolation of a loneliness and grief that Loring could not see unmoved,
yet could not reconcile with what he had believed of her.

Up to this moment he had heard of her only as an artful girl, the
confederate of thieves and ruffians. Up to this moment he had seen her
only once, the afternoon she threw herself on Blake, as Blake and he had
both come to believe, to prevent his drawing revolver on the two rascals
at the ranch. Yet, never had Loring heard such pathetic pleading, never
had he seen child or woman in such utter abandonment of woe. Never had
he thought it possible that Pancha, the siren of Sancho's ranch--cold,
crafty, luring, designing, treacherous as any Carmen ever since
portrayed upon the stage--could be capable of such intensity of feeling.
Drawing his uniform "cape" snugly about him, for now the sharp sea wind
was whistling through the cordage and chilling his fever-weakened frame,
Loring leaned against the rail, gazing back at the receding shores,
trying not to hear the girl's sobbing. The chatter of the flock of women
was incessant. Turnbull and two Guaymas merchants had joined the group,
but all were intent on those harbor lights now fast glimmering to mere
sparks upon the sea, and the lonely girl sat there forgotten. Not once
was voice uplifted in question as to what had become of her. Every
moment now the stern was lifted higher in air and then dropped deeper
into the roaring, hissing waters, and women tightened their hold upon
the taffrail and gave shrill little shrieks, and huddled closer
together, and presently one of the elders fell back and begged to be led
below, and then another, and by the time the last glimmer of the town
had been hid from view and only the steady gleam of the lighthouse shone
forth upon their foaming wake, the hardiest of the gay little party of
the earlier evening had been carefully assisted down the brass-bound
stairway, and when five bells tinkled windily somewhere forward, there,
with little hands clasped about the stanchion, a shawl thrown over her
head, that head pillowed in her arms, there alone in the darkness and
the rush of the wind and sea, there, the very picture of heartbroken
girlhood, still sat Pancha, and Loring could bear it no longer.

He was thinking over his Spanish to be sure of his words when the
starboa