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 sight for an opportunity of picking up a cheap souvenir, as it might be said, which she could have boasted of in future times.

There was nothing in the road but the dust of the visitors' going, and an ox-cart coming from the field with white onions that looked like a load of snow.

"Brigand no more, as you have heard," Juan laughed, diverted by the ingenuous woman's outspoken disappointment. "You can stop at his tavern the first time you go to the pueblo, and hear him talk by the hour."

Magdalena gave him a look of reproof, drawing her finely traced brows in a frown.

"As if I would put my foot into a robber's den, Don Juan! Alvitre in his tavern will rob twenty men where he used to rob one on the road."

"Yes, I think a traveler would be about as safe with him in one place as another."

"You learn our speech fast, Don Juan; already it spins from your tongue like a thread from the wheel."

"It is a good place for learning many things, this mission San Fernando. Would to God, Doña Magdalena, I could stay here forever."

"You would not leave us? No, there is no ship goes to your country."

"I must leave soon, doña; across the land, the way I came."

"The poor Indians would weep to see you go,