"Wait, Gremo, wait!" she cried, "I am coming! Do not leave me here alone." The chestnut paced as never horse paced before, and after a few minutes Agueda found a little cleft in the bank where a stream trickled down. Into this opening she guided Castaño, and with spur and whip aided him in his scramble up the bank. She galloped southward again, and neared the place where Gremo stood. She was guided by the mass of bloom. As she advanced she saw the blossoms shaking, but as yet perceived nothing human. Tales of the forest suddenly came back to her. Could it be that this was a woodland spirit, who had lured her here to this high headland, to throw her over the cliff again to keep company with the dead man yonder and the birds of prey? She had half turned her horse, when Gremo, seeing her plan, thrust himself further from his gorgeous environment.
"Ah! It is the little Agueda! Do not be afraid, Agueda, little Señorita. It is I, Gremo."
Agueda's cheek had not as yet regained its colour.
"It is Gremo, muchachito."
"What terrible thing is that down there, Gremo? And to see you looking like this frightened me!"
It was a curious sight which met Agueda's eyes. Gremo, the little yellow keeper of Los Santos light, was standing not far from his signal pole. He held a staff in each hand. The staves were crooked and uneven. They were covered with bark, and scraggy bits of moss hung from them here and there. The strange thing about them was that each blossomed like the prophet's rod. At the top of the right-hand staff there shot out a splendid orange-coloured flower, with velvety oval-shaped leaves. Near the top of the left-hand staff was a pale pink blossom, large also, not wilted, as plucked flowers are apt to be, but firm and fresh. But these were not all the prophet's rods which Gremo carried. Across his back was slung an old canvas stool, opened to its fullest extent, and laid lengthwise across this were many more ragged staves, and on each and all of them a flower of some shade or colour bloomed. Then there were branches held under his arms, whose protruding ends blossomed in Agueda's very face, and quite enclosed the yellow countenance of Gremo. The glossy green of the leaves surrounding each bloom so concealed Gremo that he was lost in his vari-coloured burden of loveliness.
"So it is really you, Gremo! Do they smell sweet, those air-plants?"
Gremo shifted from one leg to the other. One of Gremo's legs was shorter than the other. He generally settled down on the short one to argue. When he was indignant he raised himself upon his long leg and hurled defiance from the elevation.
The mass of bloom seemed to exhale a delicate aroma. So evanescent was it that Gremo often said to himself, "Have they any scent after all?" And then, in a moment, a breeze blew from left to right, across the open calix of each delicate flower, and Gremo said, "How sweet they are!"
"I sometimes think they are the sweetest things on God's earth," said Gremo. "That is, when the Señorita is not by," he added, remembering that his grandfather had brought some veneer from old Spain; "and then again I ask myself, is there any perfume at all?"