A handsome young giant, I should imagine any girl would love him at sight. Demure little Hulda--a brown sparrow of a girl--loved him, I felt certain, though nothing as yet had been said of any engagement between them. I rather hoped it would come to pass; and I think Dan's parents did also, for Hulda was very lovable. * * * * * Life often holds odd coincidences. At eleven o'clock, this night of February 10, I was in Washington with father and Freddie. What father was telling me I thought then the most important event of the world's welfare. But at almost the same time, Hulda, in Porto Rico, was sitting in the living room with Dan Cain. And another event, wholly different in significance yet of equal importance to the world, was impending. The elder Cains had retired. Dan and Hulda, characteristic of them of late when alone, had fallen into sober discussion. Dan was really perturbed over the weather. The temperature had gone far into the forties the night before. Florida citrus trees might stand that for a limited period, but it certainly was not good for Porto Rican trees. And the Florida citrus industry was wiped out this winter. It had snowed last week all over the peninsula; a fall of snow with a following freeze that had killed everything which the December freeze had spared. And now--into the forties in Porto Rico! Ten degrees lower would be freezing. If this kept on-- The sound of a pony thudding up the knoll at a gallop broke in upon Hulda's and Dan's gloomy reflections. They stared at each other. "What could that be?" Dan was on his feet. The pony came up to the front porch entrance, stopped, and on the wooden steps bare feet sounded. Dan flung open the door. The pale-blue vacuum light newly established in the Porto Rican rural districts was behind him; the doorway was a dark rectangle of brilliant stars and cold moonlight, and a rush of chill air swept in. A peon was on the porch, dirty white trousers and white shirt, ghostly in the moonlight. He was barefooted and bareheaded. His little white pony stood at the foot of the steps in a lather of sweat, drooping and panting. "Ramon!" Dan exclaimed. "What the devil! Come in here!" It was one of the Cain's house boys. He came in, chattering, but not from cold. His coffee-colored face had a green cast with its pallor. He was frightened almost beyond speech. "What the devil!" Dan shook the boy with annoyance. Hulda stood apart, staring, and a nameless fear was on her; an unreasonable shudder as though this thing--in its outward aspect the mere fright of a native boy, which probably meant nothing important--were something gruesome, horrible, unutterably frightening. "Ramon--" Dan shook him again, and the boy suddenly poured out a flood of Spanish; broken, incoherent--Hulda could not understand it. She saw Dan's face grow grave, and then he laughed. But it struck Hulda then that the incredulous laugh had a note of fear in it.