Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/59



HAT a strange man you are, John Miller," said Padre Mateo looking at him in unmasked admiration as they walked together at the border of a field of maize, where the hurrying clear water of an irrigation ditch murmured over boulders with which its bottom and sides had been paved with infinite labor and pains.

"Yes; the barber turned a basket over my head and cut around the edges. I couldn't make him understand that I wanted it cut close to my head, or maybe he thought the shock of losing so much hair all at once would be too great."

"He could not understand why anybody but a soldier or a priest would want his hair and beard shorn away at all," Padre Mateo laughed. "It is the fashion among the gente fina, that is to say the best people, to wear the hair long, and the beard in such fashion as you saw on Captain del Valle's chin But you, my friend, you look this morning as if you had risen from a sickness, with your bare face all white where the beard covered it, and brown as the leather of my sandal above. See how the neophytes stare at you. They doubtless think you are some