Page:James Hopper--Caybigan.djvu/195

Rh had turned tail and run before it, and now the Maestro was looking upon a golden strip of beach and a curtain of coconut palms, behind which peeped the nipa roofs of his own little pueblo. In a few minutes more the prao, balanced upon a white curling swell, had slid its nose up upon the sand, and the Maestro, with a great leap, found himself at the identical spot from which, three days before, his heart a-pound with strange tumult, he had embarked, too impatient to wait for the lazy little steamer which offered regular, if slow, passage once a week.

"Damn!" said the Maestro, as his foot struck the sand. "Damn! a deuce of a bridegroom I make, I do!"

But Tolio, his muchacho, who had stayed behind in guard of the house, was running down the beach toward him, waving a dirty piece of paper. It was a telegram, transmitted by carrier from Bacolod, which was in cable communication with Ilo-Ilo. The Maestro read it quickly; then he re-read it aloud, pausing upon each word as if to sink its dread significance deep into his dazed brain.

"Have missed you in Ilo-Ilo. Am coming on tomorrow's steamer. Girlie."

Behind the Maestro a cast-up log was bleaching in the sun, and he sat down upon it very suddenly and limply, as if his bony carcass had turned to water.