Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/61

 you are, Juan Molinero, and stand until you have it right. Now, say it after me, slowly: Padre Mateo; Padre Mateo."

Padre Mateo beat out the simple syllables with his finger as if he directed a tune; John Miller, henceforward to be Juan Molinero in California, stood by with long lean legs spraddled, repeating the two words until he had both sound and inflection as smooth on his tongue as oil.

"Now, that will do very well," Padre Mateo commended him. "Your tongue is not stubborn, you will acquire the speech readily. It is necessary, it is very necessary, that you begin at once. You are a man of some learning, I think, Juan; you have been in school?"

"Back in Virginia, padre, I had some schooling. I could have gone to college if I'd stayed there, and made something out of myself, maybe a lawyer, like every second man in Virginia. But I went venturin' off to Kentucky with a band of boys like myself, and the woods swallered me. A man soon loses all he ever got out of books when he's amongst wild Indians and wild animals in the woods, Padre Mateo."

"That is so, Juan; even here that is so. The refinements leave a man, unless he spends the night with his books like Padre Ignacio. There is one whom no wilderness can erase, no solitude obscure. And what age have you now, Juan?"

"Thirty-three."

"That is a good age, that is a man's age, it was