"Did you try to give Pablo some money—say, about five dollars?" he demanded, smilingly.
"Yes." Her eyes betrayed wonder.
"He declined it with profuse thanks, didn't he?"
"You're the queerest man I've ever met. Pablo did refuse it. How did you know?"
"I know Pablo. He wouldn't take money from a lady. It's against the code of the Rancho Palomar, and if his boss ever heard that he had fractured that code, he'd skin him alive."
"Not Pablo's boss. Pablo told me his Don Mike, as he calls him, was killed by the bewhiskered devils in a cold country the name of which he had heard but could not remember. He meant Siberia."
Farrel sat up suddenly.
"What's that?" he cried sharply. "He told you Don Mike had been killed?"
"Yes—poor fellow! Pablo said Don Mike's father had had a telegram from the War Department."
Farrel's first impulse was to curse the War Department—in Spanish, so she would not understand. His second was to laugh, and his third to burst into tears. How his father had suffered! Then he remembered that to-night, he, the said Don Mike, was to have the proud privilege of returning from Valhalla, of bringing the light of joy back to the faded eyes of old Don Miguel, and in the swift contemplation of the drama and the comedy impending, he stood staring at her rather stupidly. Pablo would doubtless believe he was a ghost returned to haunt old scenes; the majordomo would make the sign of the cross and start running, never pausing till he would reach the Mission of the Mother of Sorrows, there to pour forth his unbelievable tale to Father Dominic. Whereupon Father Dominic would spring into his prehistoric automobile and come up to investigate. Great jumped-up Jehoshaphat! What a climax to two years of soldiering!