Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/69

 could compress into his words on such short preparation for an excuse so splendid.

"I will say no more," said Don Felipe. "Do you go to your repose?"

"I'm going to the stable to see the black stallion; he cut his shoulder on a stake in the corral today. I must put sulphur on the wound to keep the gangrene down."

Don Felipe went into his office, where his dim candle seemed always burning, yet never burned out. It was never a full candle, never less than half, yet it was going at twilight, glimmering at dawn. How Don Felipe managed it, Henderson could not guess. It seemed to him that the fragmentary candle was emblematic of the little man in some mystical relation, a thing burning palely, not illuminating much of the world, yet doing more, perhaps, in its unremitting effort than many a greater light. It was as if Don Abrahan's dignity and consequence were borne upon the shoulders of this small, subservient man, who had known his own day of misfortune.

Simon, the teamster, lived close by the stable, his adobe hut being somewhat larger, altogether more comfortable and nearer the requirements of a human abode, than those of the other laborers in that feudal village of huts. Simon was a free and independent man, whose wages were twenty dollars a month, it was said, a sum named by the poor peones with distended eyes and low breath. Added to this was the privilege of taking his meals