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 the magistrate's face. "I'm not taking orders from the governor, I'm not taking orders from you. I get my orders from this little lady right here, and from nobody else."

Toberman glared around as he pronounced this defiance of the constituted authorities, hands back again on his hips in convenient reach of his pistols, a fearless man who had passed through many conflicts, to whom the imminence of another was nothing but an incident in his day.

"Don Abrahan, I will pay you what this fugitive owes you, according to your own reckoning of it," Helena offered, drawing a little closer to the magistrate, closing the little group in the wide, lowwalled hall. It seemed as if defiance and appeal pressed upon Don Abrahan in the same breath.

"It cannot be permitted," Don Abrahan replied.

He retreated a step from her advance, from her white arms outstretched in supplication for permission to do this humane service.

"He is a stranger, far from home, without money, without friends," she pleaded. "I will pay it in his name—seven times the amount, Don Abrahan, if you demand it."

"It cannot be adjusted in this manner," Don Abrahan refused. "Prepare quarters in this house for me and my son, "he directed, turning gruffly to Doña Carlota.

Doña Carlota started, her growing nervousness reaching its climax in the order, given with such affront to the hospitality of that house. She shifted