ldhood. Every minute the advancing day brought forth fresh
victims.

Dona Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas stepped from her
honoured doorway, as was her daily custom, to procure fresh bread
from the _panaderia_ across the street. She was clad in a skirt of
flowered yellow satin, a chemise of ruffled linen, and wore a purple
mantilla from the looms of Spain. Her lemon-tinted feet, alas! were
bare. Her progress was majestic, for were not her ancestors hidalgos
of Aragon? Three steps she made across the velvety grass, and
set her aristocratic sole upon a bunch of Johnny's burrs. Dona
Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas emitted a yowl even
as a wild-cat. Turning about, she fell upon hands and knees, and
crawled--ay, like a beast of the field she crawled back to her
honourable door-sill.

Don Senor Ildefonso Federico Valdazar, _Juez de la Paz_, weighing
twenty stone, attempted to convey his bulk to the _pulperia_ at
the corner of the plaza in order to assuage his matutinal thirst.
The first plunge of his unshod foot into the cool grass struck a
concealed mine. Don Ildefonso fell like a crumpled cathedral, crying
out that he had been fatally bitten by a deadly scorpion. Everywhere
were the shoeless citizens hopping, stumbling, limping, and picking
from their feet the venomous insects that had come in a single night
to harass them.

The first to perceive the remedy was Esteban Delgado, the barber, a
man of travel and education. Sitting upon a stone, he plucked burrs
from his toes, and made oration:

"Behold, my friends, these bugs of the devil! I know them well. They
soar through the skies in swarms like pigeons. These are the dead
ones that fell during the night. In Yucatan I have seen them as large
as oranges. Yes! There they hiss like serpents, and have wings like
bats. It is the shoes--the shoes that one needs! _Zapatos--zapatos
para mi!_"

Esteban hobbled to Mr. Hemstetter's store, and bought shoes. Coming
out, he swaggered down the street with impunity, reviling loudly the
bugs of the devil. The suffering ones sat up or stood upon one foot
and beheld the immune barber. Men, women and children took up the
cry: "_Zapatos! zapatos!_"

The necessity for the demand had been created. The demand followed.
That day Mr. Hemstetter sold three hundred pairs of shoes.

"It is really surprising," he said to Johnny, who came up in the
evening to help him straighten out the stock, "how trade is picking
up. Y