Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/62

 dark eyes, to lurk in his fine gray beard. A little while he stood thus regarding the rebellious servant, his cigar held in his fingers daintily on a level with his mouth.

"You have much to learn," he said at last.

So speaking, he turned and sauntered away, following, it seemed, his train of meditation with serene and unruffled mind.

Henderson felt the hot blood of resentment in his face as he stood looking after the benevolent tyrant, hotter words checked on his tongue. He realized that this was not a time for further words; that for Don Abrahan the question was settled, not to be opened again. The man's carriage said as much as he walked on his slow, meditative way.

Henderson's contempt for this law that made a man's body the security for his debts was mounting with his determination to defy Don Abrahan, the country and its institutions of slavery, by deserting the ranch that night. He was not ready to accept Don Abrahan's word for it that the law would bind a citizen of another country in slavery. There would be some American at Monterey, where he had heard there was even a United States consul, who could inform him of his rights in this feudal land.

The mayordomo stood outside his office door as Henderson turned back in that direction. It was as if he waited for Henderson to be passed on to him from his patron's hands, like a tennis ball.