into a poignant, sobbing melody.

"I don't know what the words mean," said the personage under his breath.
"I don't believe I want to know. I fancy every one fits his own words to
it."

"Or his own need," said Richard King's wife. She slipped her hand into
her husband's. The melody rose and fell, sobbed and soared. Honor drew
closer to Jimsy and he put his arm about her and held her hard. "Yes,"
he whispered. "I know." The man who had asked for _Golondrina_ sat with
bent head and his cigar went out. Only Carter Van Meter, as once long
ago in Los Angeles, seemed unmoved, unstirred, scatheless.

There was a little silence after the music. Then the personage said,
"You know, I fancy that's Mexico, that song!"

Jimsy King wheeled to face him through the dusk. "Yes, sir! It's true!
That _is_ Mexico,--everything that's been done to her,--and everything
she'll do, some day!"

"It's--beautiful and terrible," said Honor. "I had to keep telling
myself that we are all safe and happy, and that nothing is going to
happen to us!"

Carter laughed and got quickly to his feet. "I suggest indoors and
lights--and Honor! Honor must sing for us!"

She never needed urging; she sang as gladly as a bird on a bush. The
Kings were parched for music; they begged for another and another. She
had almost to reproduce her recital in Florence. Jimsy listened, rapt
and proud, and at the end he said--"Not too tired for one more, Skipper?
Our song?"

"Never too tired for that, Jimsy!" She sat down again and struck her
stepfather's ringing, rousing chords. Instantly it ceased, there in the
room, to be Mexico; it was as if a wind off the sea blew past them. The
first verse had them all erect in their chairs. She swung into the
second, holding a taut rein on herself:

The sand of the desert is sodden red;
Red with the wreck of a square that broke;
The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke:
The River of Death has brimmed his banks;
And England's far and Honor's a name,
But the voice of a school boy rallies the ranks--
Play up! Play up! and--Play the Game!

Honor sat still at the piano. She did not mean to lift her eyes until
she could be sure they would not run over. Why did that song always
sweep her away so?--from the first moment Stepper had read her the words
in the old house on South Figueroa Street, all those years ago? Why had
she always the feeling