trious family, noted throughout the centuries for
the gallantry of its warriors."

"A small comfort, Don Miguel, if our Don Mike comes not again to those
that love him."

"Pray for him," the old Don suggested piously.

Fell a silence. Then,

"Don Miguel, yonder comes one over the trail from El Toro."

Don Miguel gazed across the valley to the crest of the hills. There,
against the sky-line, a solitary horseman showed. Pablo cupped his
hands over his eyes and gazed long and steadily.

"It is Tony Moreno," he said, while the man was still a mile distant.
"I know that scuffling cripple of a horse he rides."

Don Miguel seated himself On the bench beside Pablo and awaited the
arrival of the horseman. As he drew nearer, the Don saw that Pablo was
right.

"Now, what news does that vagabond bear?" he muttered. "Assuredly he
brings a telegram; otherwise the devil himself could not induce that
lazy wastrel to ride twenty miles."

"Of a truth you are right, Don Miguel. Tony Moreno is the only man in
El Toro who is forever out of a job, and the agent of the telegraph
company calls upon him always to deliver messages of importance."

With the Don, he awaited, with vague apprehension, the arrival of Tony
Moreno. As the latter pulled his sweating horse up before them, they
rose and gazed upon him questioningly. Tony Moreno, on his part,
doffed his shabby sombrero with his right hand and murmured courteously,

"_Buenas tardes_, Don Miguel."

Pablo he ignored. With his left hand, he caught a yellow envelope as
it fell from under the hat.

"Good-afternoon, Moreno." Don Miguel returned his salutation with a
gravity he felt incumbent upon one of his station to assume when
addressing a social inferior. "You bring me a telegram?" He spoke in
English, for the sole purpose of indicating to the messenger that the
gulf between them could not be spanned by the bridge of their mother
tongue. He suspected Tony Moreno very strongly of having stolen a
yearling from him many years ago.

Tony Moreno remembered his manners, and dismounted before handing Don
Miguel the telegram.

"The delivery charges?" Don Miguel queried courteously.

"Nothing, Don Miguel." Moreno's voice was strangely subdued. "It is a
pleasure to serve you, _senor_."

"You are very kind." And Don Miguel thrust the telegram, unopened,
into his pocket. "However," he continued, "it will please me, Moreno,
if you accept this slight token of my appre