through the long watches of the night. Loring's heart reproached him as
he realized how selfishly he had been engrossed for weeks, how little he
had thought for her, of her who must be so lonely and homesick in her
new sphere. He was almost shocked now at the pallor of her face, the
droop and languor of the slender figure that was so buoyant and elastic
those bright days aboard ship just preceding the catastrophe. What
friends and chums they had become! How famously he was getting on with
his Spanish! What a charming teacher she was, with her lovely shining
eyes, her laughing lips, her glistening white teeth! She seemed happy as
a queen then, and now--what had come over the child?

"They are going to let me write to you, Pancha," he had told her, "and I
shall write every month, but you will write to me long letters, won't
you?"

"_Si_," and the dusky little head bowed lower, and Pancha was
withdrawing her hand.

"You know I have no little sister," he went on.

She did. She had learned all this and much more aboard ship, and
remembered every word he had told her, very much more than he
remembered. She knew far more about him than did he about her, but he
looked far more interested now. The good gray sister was more than good;
she was very busy at something away across the room, and Loring had
drawn his little friend to the window.

"How I wish I had known you there at--at the Gila, Pancha," he managed
to say in slow, stumbling Spanish. "Do you know we made a great mistake,
Mr. Blake and I?"

She did not wish to know. Two little hands went up imploringly, the dark
head drooped lower still, the slender, girlish form was surely
trembling. What ailed the child? It was time to go, yet he lingered. He
felt a longing to take her hands again--clasped in each other now, and
hanging listless as she leaned against the window casing. He meant to
bend and kiss her good-by, just as he would have kissed a younger
sister, he said to himself, not as he had kissed Geraldine Allyn. But
somehow he faltered, and that was something unusual to Walter Loring.
Even at risk of being abrupt, he felt it time to go, but after the
manner of weaker men, took out his watch.

"Yes, I must go, Pancha. We won't say good-by, will we? It is until
to-morrow--_hasta la manana_. You know we always come again to
California. You'll be quite a woman, then, though." He who was so brief
and reticent with men, found himself prattling with this child, unable