could make itself heard in
the valley where tobacco grew and ripened, or on the height where no
vegetation lived at all. The house seemed to hang between sky and earth,
and the air that moved the cypress trees was cool and thin--a very breath
of heaven to make thinkers wonder why any who can help it should choose
to live in towns.

The green shutters had been closed across the windows for nearly three
months, when on one spring morning the villagers looked up to see the
house astir and the windows opened wide.

There had been much to detain the Sarrions at Saragossa and Juanita had
to wait for the gratification of her desire to smell the pines and the
bracken again.

It seemed that it was no one's business to question the validity of the
strange marriage in the chapel of Our Lady of the Shadows. Evasio Mon who
was supposed to know more about it than any other, only smiled and said
nothing. Leon de Mogente was absorbed in his own peculiar selfishness
which was not of this world but the next. He fell into the mistake common
to ecstatic minds that thoughts of Heaven justify a deliberate neglect of
obvious duties on earth.

"Leon," said Juanita gaily to Cousin Peligros, "will assuredly be a saint
some day: he has so little sense of humour."

For Leon it seemed could not be brought to understand Juanita's sunny
view of life.

"You may look solemn and talk of great mistakes as much as you like," she
said to her brother. "But I know I was never meant for a nun. It will all
come right in the end. Uncle Ramon says so. I don't know what he means.
But he says it will all come right in the end."

And she shook her head with that wisdom of the world which is given to
women only; which may live in the same heart as ignorance and innocence
and yet be superior to all the knowledge that all the sages have ever put
in books.

There were lawyers to be consulted and moreover paid, and Juanita gaily
splashed down her name in a bold schoolgirl hand on countless documents.

There is a Spanish proverb warning the unwary never to drink water in the
dark or sign a paper unread. And Marcos made Juanita read everything she
signed. She was quick enough, and only laughed when he protested that she
had not taken in the full meaning of the document.

"I understand it quite enough," she answered. "It is not worth troubling
about. It is only money. You men think of nothing else. I do not want to
understand it any better."

"Not now; but so