he
information that he expected to leave town early the next morning, and
that Lola would be sent over from the Vigils.

All during the afternoon Jane waited with breathless expectancy. The
afternoon waned, but Lola did not come. Finally, possessed of fear and
foreboding, Jane set forth to inquire into the matter.

Upon opening the Vigil gate, she saw Lola herself sitting on the
doorstep, looking over toward the little wood crosses of the Mexican
burying-ground. The girl hardly noted Jane's approach, but behind her,
Senora Vigil came forward, shaking her head at Jane and touching her
lip significantly.

"She does not know," whispered the senora. "Her papa did not say
good-by. He said it was better for him to 'slip away.' And me--I could
not tell her! I am only a woman."

"You think--she will not want--to live with me?"

The other's face grew very bland. "She said to-day 'how ugly' was your
house," confessed Senora Vigil. "And when you was feeding your chickens
she cried out, '_Hola_, what a queer woman is yonder!' Children have
funny things in their heads. But it is for you to tell her you come to
fetch her away!" And the senora called out, "_Lolita, ven aca!_"

The girl looked up startled. "_Que hay?_" she asked, coming toward them
apprehensively.

"Lola," began Jane, "your papa wants you should stay with me for a
while. He--he saw how lonesome I was," she continued, unwisely,
"and--and so he decided to leave you here. Lola, I hope--I--" She could
not go on for the strangeness in Lola's gaze.

"Is he _gone_--my father? But no! he would not leave me behind! No! no!
_Dejeme! dejeme!_ you do not say the truth! You shall not touch me! I
will not--will not go with you!" She turned wildly, dizzily, as if
about to run she knew not where; and then flung herself down before
Senora Vigil, clasping the Mexican woman's knees in a frantic, fainting
grasp.

A SACRED CHARGE

CHAPTER TWO

A SACRED CHARGE

Jane helplessly regarded the child's despair, while Senora Vigil
maintained an attitude curiously significant of deep compassion and a
profound intention of neutrality. With the sound of Lola's distraught
refusals in her ear, Jane felt upon her merely the instinct of flight.
She rallied her powers of speech and set her hand on the gate, saying
simply, "I'm going. She better stay here."

But at this the senora's face, which had exhibited a kind of woful
pleasure in the excitement of the occasion, took o