to hold his peace. He was perhaps wise
in his generation. Politeness never yet won a woman's love.

Marcos had noted Juanita's lightness of heart. On recovering his senses
the first use he had made of them was to observe her every glance and
silence. There was no sign of present anxiety or of great emotion. The
incident of the ring had no other meaning therefore, than a girlish love
of novelty or a taste not hitherto made manifest, for personal ornament.
It might have deceived any one less observant than Marcos; less in the
habit of watching Nature and dumb animals. He was patient, however, and
industrious in the collection of evidence against himself. And she had
startled him by saying that she was grown-up; though he perceived soon
after, that it was only a manner of speaking; for she was still careless
and happy, without a thought of the future, as children are.

These things, however, he kept to himself. He had not sent for his father
to talk to him of Juanita. Men never discuss a woman in whom they are
really interested, though fools do.

"That horse didn't fall," said Marcos to his father. "He was thrown.
There was a wire across the road."

"There was none when I got there," replied Sarrion.

"Then it had been removed. I saw it as we fell. My foot caught in it or I
could have thrown myself clear in the usual way."

Sarrion reflected a moment.

"Let me look at the note that Zeneta wrote you," he said.

"You will find it in my pocket, hanging behind the door. I was a fool. I
was in too great a hurry. Now that I think of it, Zeneta would not have
written a note like that."

"Then he never wrote it at all," said Sarrion, who had found the paper
and was reading it near the window. The clear morning light brought out
the wrinkles and the crow's-feet with inexorable distinctness on his keen
narrow face.

"What does it mean?" he asked at length, folding the letter and replacing
it in the pocket from which he had taken it.

Marcos roused himself with an effort. He was sleepy.

"I think it means that Evasio Mon is about," he answered.

"No man in the valley would have done it," suggested Sarrion.

"If any man in the valley had done it he would have put his knife into me
when I lay on the road, which would have been murder."

He gave a short laugh and was silent.

"And the hand inside the velvet glove does not risk murder," reflected
Sarrion, "They have not given up the game yet. We must be careful of
ours