"Yes; and I've no doubt they did; though the Mexicans themselves had never heard of such a mine. Yet—and it shows how names will stick long after people have forgotten their origin—yet, just outside the village there stands a big, square adobe building, showing four blank walls to the outside, with a single gateway cut through one of them, flat-roofed and battlemented—a regular fortress—and it is called to this day the Casa del Rey:—the King's House. Now, why should it be called the King's House? The Mexicans have no idea; but to me it seems plain enough. The King Philip mine was probably a royal mine, and the residence of the king's representative, the storage-place for the product of the mine, the headquarters of the soldier escort, would naturally be called the King's House."
"It seems likely, doesn't it? Is that the professor's opinion?"
"Yes. He feels sure that the King Philip mine is not far from the village; possibly—in fact, probably—in the Dos Hermanos mountains."
"And did he ever make any attempt to find it?"
"Not he. Prospecting is altogether out of his line. It was only the historical side of the matter that interested him. All he did was to write to the Señor Blake at Cadiz, in Spain, telling him about it; though whether the letter ever reached its destination he has never heard."
"And who lives in the King's House now?" I asked. "Anybody?"
"Yes. It is occupied by a man named Galvez, the 'padron' of the village, who owns, or claims, all the country down there for five miles square—the Hermanos Grant. We did not see him when we were there, but from what we heard of him, he seems to regard himself as lord of creation in those parts, owning not only the land, but the village and the villagers, too."
"How so? How can he own the villagers?"
"Why, it is not an uncommon state of affairs in these remote Mexican settlements. The padron provides the people with the clothes or the tools or the seed they require on credit, taking security on next year's crop, and so manages matters as to get them into debt and keep them there; for they are an improvident lot. In this way they fall into a state of chronic indebtedness, working their land practically for the benefit of the padron and becoming in effect little better than slaves."