Page:The Eight-Oared Victors.djvu/102



"Who are you—what you do here?"

The question was snapped out at Tom and Ruth as they stood near the shack. A man had come to an abrupt halt as he emerged from the bushes and faced them; something of fear, Tom thought, mingled with anger showing on his face. It was this man whom they had heard approaching, a man clad in ordinary garments, yet with an indefinable foreign air about him—an air that was accentuated by his words and inflection. He was dark of skin, swarthy, and when he smiled, which he did a moment after his rather harsh words of greeting, his very white teeth showed beneath a small black moustache. A Spaniard Tom put him down for, or a Mexican. The latter guess proved correct, as the lad learned afterward.

"You come here to—to—pardon, senor, I am forgetting my manners," went on the fellow with a bow, and a sharp glance at Ruth. "You are here perhaps to look at cottages—you and your charming bride."