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 "He has fallen in the ditch, very likely. Come, Juan, let us find him."

"I have looked for him everywhere," Magdalena panted, putting out her hands in gesture of helplessness, of expressive emptiness. "I would not have come to you, only I saw the light."

"Then he has taken a horse to ride out among the cattle," Padre Ignacio assured her, untroubled by her failure to find Don Geronimo. "He is not a man to be looked after like a little child, doña; return to your bed, we shall see what he is about."

They left Magdalena at her door, while they continued on to the corral where the vaqueros commonly kept their horses at night. This was on the river-bank, built in such manner that the beasts could go down to the stream to drink. It was an enclosure between high adobe walls; its openings barred by peeled saplings, smooth-polished from years of use.

"She looked at you as if she believed you had eaten him," Padre Ignacio said, rather sad than indignant to see such suspicion in Magdalena's face. "That is another result of your hasty blow, my son."

"What is this? The horses are all turned out, Padre."

The bars were thrown down in the disorder of haste, the corral was empty.

"Where are a woman's eyes, that she couldn't see this?" Padre Ignacio wondered. "But why the fellow has turned them out at midnight, and