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 lids over long-slitted eyes; a soldier's daughter in the pueblo, whose smile through her barred window had made his heart faint with ecstasy, his knees weak in the sickness of a so sweet malady.

"It is secure, it is safe, knowing that the American gentleman is on guard this night," said Gertrudis, so softly that the words must have been meant for her own heart alone.

"Ah!" said Padre Mateo to himself, nodding his wise head in the dark, "the judgment of youth is quick and sure, world without end."

"But if the soldiers take him, then he must die!" she said, her words quick, sharp, as if the man's peril had been revealed to her without the splendor of romance only that moment.

"That is the fear that walks with me," Padre Mateo confessed. "I led him into the danger, but I urged him to return while he could have done so in safety. He scorned the thought."

"Certainly; I would—anybody who had looked him in the eyes would—have known he wouldn't go back. And tomorrow!" her fear leaping into her words, quickening them, giving them a panting anxiety; "if the soldiers meet us tomorrow!"

"Then Juan Molinero will find a way," Padre Mateo said, as confident as he was that his own feet were on the ground.