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 broad simple face suddenly grave, his booming voice subdued.

"You are a good man, Borromeo," she praised him; "you are becoming a better man every day."

"What of the mill, Don Geronimo, that this stranger was to build for Padre Ignacio? Does it go?" Sergeant Olivera made the inquiry in light derisiveness, as a man speaks of another's ridiculous simplicity to the one who has borne the affliction of it, certain that he has pitched his tune to a sympathetic ear.

"It goes," Don Geronimo replied without enthusiasm, grudgingly, as the flatness of his voice betrayed. "There is a devilish ingenuity in the hand of that man. What calamities his innovations shall bring to this mission I shrink to contemplate."

"Calamities?" Sergeant Olivera repeated the word curiously, as a man turns, with a puzzled face, a thing that he does not understand.

"Saving labor to these Indians is not wise," Don Geronimo answered gloomily. "They see the water doing their work in one thing; presently they will demand that the water do it in-all things. No, the millstones with the sweep were better than this arrangement; I do not care if the stranger's mill grinds ten times as much."

"And it goes?" said Sergeant Olivera, keenly curious, leaning a little in his eagerness to learn more.

"I will tell you how Don Juan and I made the