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 chief about her head, twinkling on the great gold rings in her ears.

"Just as if I didn't know your fraud as well as I can see the bottom of an empty bucket," she said. "Borromeo, you never killed anybody, you never killed anything; your heart is too soft."

"So, I was condemned to prison for doing good!" he sneered, but badly, making a poor effect.

"For stealing, that is all; stealing money out of a man's pockets, the prank of a foolish boy. I have heard it. You were drunk at: the time."

"Now!" said Borromeo, beating the horseshoe furiously, his face dark-red as the cooling iron. "What slanders you heap on a man, Doña Magdalena, with your bold tongue. Say, then, that I was put under a penance for stepping on a dog's tail!"

"You were put under a penance for fighting the soldiers in barracks when all of you were drunk on brandy brought from Santa Barbara, you simple great ox. Go on, live in the reputation of a dangerous man with blood on his fingers—I'll not betray your innocence, Borromeo."

Borromeo dropped his hammer, reached with a little spring and drew his smutty fingers across her cheek, leaving four streaks of black. She looked at him in humorous reproach, the simple fellow's heart as well known to her as the secrets of a divided apple, her fingers ruefully trailing where his had swept, as if to feel the grime.

"Rascal!" she said, laughing again in his eyes.