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 sun could not shine on him, or the light of a pretty lady's eyes. I am afraid, by my breath, that Don Geronimo will have reason to cut my throat if I am left alone with you very much—I may take you under my arm and carry you away."

"What a terror you put in my heart!" Magdalena laughed, her big earrings twinkling in the candlelight when she threw her head back, gaily as a girl at a fiesta. "Well, have you seen the governor, Borromeo?"

"No; he did not come to the shop to pay his respects, and I am not going to stand on a leg like a chicken in the rain waiting for him to show his face around the corner. And so you are feeding him veal, heh? Doña, it is as tender as the breast of a dove."

"Borromeo, San Fernando would be a disconsolate place without you," she said with great gentleness. "I have a gill of brandy here, and there is coffee for you to put it in. So you see what fine things come when the governor rides down from Monterey to visit us here in the south. Padre Ignacio has been saving this choice berry in his chest for some such notable occasion as this."

"It smells—doña it smells—what is it this coffee sets me thinking of with its smell? Ah! the market at Tepic on a Sunday morning, where I went one time with my father, long, long, ago. It is a queer thing, doña, how God has made a little place in everybody's head to put these recollections away, for dust to settle on them, it might be said, until some