ing, squirming, happy.

"For me you name him?" Lopez finally got out. "Oh, too good you are to me.
Pancho! my own leetle boy! Pancho! 'Some' name, what you say, eh?"

And he pinched the child's cheek, tenderly as his mother would have done.

"And here's mine!" Angela, not to be outdone, piped up, presenting her
child, also in her arms, to the delirious bandit.

"An' what heez name?"

"It ain't a he--it's a she, I told you!" Angela corrected.

"Ah! All kinds you 'ave 'ere, eh? Good! An' what _'er_ name?"

"Can't you guess?" asked "Red," coming forward, smiling.

"A girl? What use I 'ave for girls?" laughed Pancho Lopez. "What you say
now--what's ze name?"

"Why, Panchita! What else could we have named her?" Angela said.

You could have knocked the Mexican down with a straw. This time he was
flabbergasted.

"You all too fine, too tender, too good to me," he said; and there was a
softness in his speech that none of them had guessed could be there, save,
perhaps, Gilbert.

"Oh, no," Jones said. "We wanted a little Mexican touch in our households.
And we've never forgotten you, old friend. Tell me, where have you been all
these months? We hoped to hear from you. But never a word or a sign from
you. Aren't you just a little ashamed of yourself now, when you see how
much we have been thinking of you?"

Lopez hung his head. "Yes, my frand, I _am_ ashamed." Then he looked around
at all of them. "I love you very much. I dream of you often, an' I say to
myself. 'Some day I go back there, an' see my old frands which I make so
'appy.' But I bandit no more, an' travel I hate in trains. I reform. I
settle down in Mexico City. I 'ave baby too, an' good wife, good mother.
But I get 'omesick, 'ow you say, for you all, an' so I come down for what
you call 'oliday, an'--'ere I am! You 'ave made me very 'appy to-night. I
love you all even more seence I see zese cheeldrens. _Madre Dio!_ How fine
to 'ave cheeldren!"

"Ain't we ever goin' to finish our supper?" Uncle Henry wanted to know; but
his tone was not querulous; it was plaintively sweet, and it held a note of
invitation for everyone.

Laughing, they all sat down, but not before Pedro had been asked in. The
frightened cook--the same who had been drunk that fatal evening when Pancho
first arrived--scurried here and there, eager to serve the distinguished
guest.

"You all right!" Lopez told him. "Never fear, so long as you bring me good
'ot coffee!"

And, happy as the