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 not ungracefully, and seated himself in the offered chair.

Magdalena placed the trencher of meat before him; the others watched him curiously, as if they expected him to pick it up like an Indian and set his teeth into it with a growl. Strangely, the man's interest was not in the meat, but the broken great loaf of bread that lay on the bare board of the table near Magdalena's place. He reached for the loaf, which he held a moment before his eyes as a man lifts a relic which brings him recollections of a happier day, then put it down almost reverently, clasped his hands on the table edge and bowed his head.

"He thanks God for bread!" Borromeo whispered. "So, he must be a Christian, and not a gentile out of the wilderness."

"His eyes are blue, blue as the little flowers on the hills in April," Magdalena said.

"There is no strength in a man with light eyes," Borromeo declared.

"He probably is German; only the Germans have hair the color of fool's gold," Don Geronimo said.

"It is his fast day," Borromeo said, in his great gusty whisper. "See, he eats nothing but bread."

"What is your opinion of him, Sergeant Olivera?" Don Geronimo inquired.

"I think he is a Russian; that nation has country to the north of Alta California, I am told."

"Now he cuts meat, he feeds himself like a gentleman," Magdalena spoke with a certain triumph as if she had assumed the defense of the strange