"Ha, for a chance at him!" another screeched. "How the landlord did howl when he was whipped!"
"He rode in this direction?" Don Alejandro asked.
"We are not sure as to that. He took the San Gabriel trail, and thirty of us followed. We separated into three bands, each going a different direction. It is the good fortune of one of the other bands to have him now, I suppose. But it is our excellent good fortune to be here."
Don Diego stood before the company.
"Señores, you will pardon me, I know, if I retire," he said. "I am fatigued with the journey."
"Retire, by all means," one of his friends cried. "And when you are rested, come out to us again and make merry."
They laughed at that; and Don Diego bowed ceremoniously, and observed that several scarcely could get to their feet to bow in return, and then the scion of the house of Vega hurried from the room with the deaf and dumb man at his heels.
He entered a room that always was ready for him, and in which a candle already was burning, and closed the door behind him, and Bernardo stretched his big form on the floor just outside it, to guard his master during the night.
In the great living-room, Don Diego scarcely was missed. His father was frowning and twisting his mustache, for he would have had his son like other young men. In his youth, he was remembering, he never left such a company early in the evening. And once again he sighed and wished that the saints had given him a son with red blood in his veins.
The caballeros were singing now, joining in the chorus of a popular love song, and their discordant voices filled the big room. Don Alejandro smiled as he listened, for it brought his own youth back to him.