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 "So you have eaten everything, like a dog," said Simon, viewing the cleaned dishes. "It is a good thing for me that you have found heart to eat, Mr. Gabriel, for Roberto would blame me with having licked your dishes myself if you happened to faint at the whipping-post when he puts the sharp rawhide to your back this afternoon. There will be no dinner; that is Don Roberto's order. Maybe just a little pinch of hunger helps a man suffer, as long as he is strong in the legs to stand. Will you smoke, Mr. Gabriel?"

"I would smoke, Simon, if I had some tobacco," Gabriel replied, no more feeling apparent in his tone against this overbearing, vain, bragging creature than if their former relations had not been changed.

"Your pipe, your watch and your money I put back in your pockets at Don Roberto's order," Simon regretfully confessed. "If you have lost them on the way it is not my fault, although I told Roberto you would do it. But we were not robbing you, he said; it must never be charged against him that he stooped to rob a runaway low Yankee who carried hides on his head to a ship."

"I didn't lose them, Simon. Have you some tobacco there?"

"Yes. If you will promise me not to set fire to the straw and strangle yourself on smoke to cheat Roberto out of his revenge for the blow you gave him, I'll let you have it, with fire to set it going in your pipe."