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 alarm, and the scurrying emotions that rise and fly out of his head like startled birds, all are contending for expression in his slumber-stiffened countenance. Don Abrahan's voice was rusty in his throat.

"What is it? Who is sounding on a man's door at this hour?" the patron demanded, evidently mistaking Henderson for a messenger from his own clan.

"Open the door wide, Don Abrahan, get into your clothes and come with me," Henderson ordered him, not gently in any particular.

"It is the voice of Gabriel, my errant son," said Don Abrahan, quick to see that all was not beginning well for him that day, quick to lay the oil of his placative tongue to the trouble standing before his door.

"It is the body of Gabriel, also," Henderson replied, "and the pistol of Gabriel that you are looking into this moment. Be wise, Don Abrahan; make haste. If you lay hand to a weapon, that moment, I swear, will be your last."

"This is an unfriendly manner to call a man from his bed, Gabriel, my son," the patron rebuked him in his patriarchal fashion.

"There is no friendship between me and your kind, sir," Henderson corrected him savagely.

"But it is not well, with the gentleness I always had in my heart for you, Don Gabriel, to come to my door with a pistol."

"Not alone a pistol," said Henderson. He