ably ineffective
as regarded the innovating stage-coach from Monterey that twice a
week at that hour brought its question-asking, revolver-persuading and
fortune-seeking load of passengers through the sleepy Spanish town. On
the night of the 3d of August, 1856, it had not only brought but set
down at the Posada one of those passengers. It was a Mr. Ezekiel
Corwin, formerly known to these pages as "hired man" to the late Squire
Blandford, of North Liberty, Connecticut, but now a shrewd, practical,
self-sufficient, and self-asserting unit of the more cautious later
Californian immigration. As the stage rattled away again with more or
less humorous and open disparagement of the town and the Posada from its
"outsiders," he lounged with lazy but systematic deliberation towards
Mateo Morez, the proprietor.

"I guess that some of your folks here couldn't direct me to Dick
Demorest's house, could ye?"

The Senor Mateo Morez was at once perplexed and pained. Pained at the
ignorance thus forced upon him by a caballero; perplexed as to its
intention. Between the two he smiled apologetically but gravely, and
said: "No sabe, Senor. I 'ave not understood."

"No more hev I," returned Ezekiel, with patronizing recognition of his
obtuseness. "I guess ez heow you ain't much on American. You folks orter
learn the language if you kalkilate to keep a hotel."

But the momentary vision of a waistless woman with a shawl gathered over
her head and shoulders at the back door attracted his attention. She
said something to Mateo in Spanish, and the yellowish-white of Mateo's
eyes glistened with intelligent comprehension.

"Ah, posiblemente; it is Don Ricardo Demorest you wish?"

Mr. Ezekiel's face and manner expressed a mingling of grateful curiosity
and some scorn at the discovery. "Wa'al," he said, looking around as if
to take the entire Posada into his confidence, "way up in North Liberty,
where I kem from, he was allus known as Dick Demorest, and didn't
tack any forrin titles to his name. Et wouldn't hev gone down there, I
reckon, 'mongst free-born Merikin citizens, no mor'n aliases would in
court--and I kinder guess for the same reason. But folks get peart
and sassy when they're way from hum, and put on ez many airs as a buck
nigger. And so he calls hisself Don Ricardo here, does he?"

"The Senor knows Don Ricardo?" said Mateo politely.

"Ef you mean me--wa'al, yes--I should say so. He was a partiklar friend
of a man I've known since