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OVERNOR DE ARRILLAGA had faced death before in his day, yet he never had been so shaken by the confrontation as tonight. This adventure had its aspect of commonality; there was no dignity in it. To be slain by a vile bandit with an outraged cross was no fitting end for a governor. It would have been said of him that he fell in a brawl, little more dignified, if not quite as ignoble, as a riot of dirty fellows in the street.

It was enough to cause a man to walk in the silence of reflection, turning over in his mind the somber thoughts that attended this happy deliverance. It was a subject for a philosopher, such as Governor de Arrillaga was in his way, this inscrutable caprice of chance, or fortune, or providence, in snatching a man one way or the other when he stood on the great divide between life and death. The governor had been silent in the contemplation of it as he walked back to the mission beside Padre Ignacio, Padre Mateo and Cristóbal going on ahead.

Juan was standing under the arcade before Don Geronimo's door, whither he had been banished by Doña Magdalena, who had only to whisper a word, indeed, in explanation of the delicate matter of Ger-