Hint of this came to him gradually. From spending long periods with him every day his mistress, after each feeding now, took to hurrying away from him. Sometimes, so great was her haste to get back to the house, she actually ran out of the corral. It worried him, and he would follow her to the gate, and there stand with nose between the boards and eyes turned after her, whimpering softly. And finally, with his bottle displaced by more solid food, and the visits of his mistress becoming less frequent, he awoke to certain mysterious arrivals and departures in a buggy of a sharp-eyed woman all in black, and he came to feel, by reason of his super-animal instinct, that something of a very grave nature was about to happen to him. Then one morning late in August he experienced that which made his fears positive convictions, though precisely what it was he did not immediately know. His mistress stepped into the corral with her usual briskness, and, walking deliberately past him, turned up an empty box in a far corner and sat down upon it, and called to him. From the instant of her entrance he had held himself back, but when she called him he rushed eagerly to her side. She placed her arms around his neck, drew his head down into her lap, and proceeded to unfold a story--later, tearful. "It's all settled," she began, with a restful sigh. "We have discussed it for weeks, and I've had a dreadful time of it, and aunty--my Mexican aunty, you know--and my other aunty, my regular aunty--I have no mother--and everybody--got so excited I didn't really know them for my own, and daddy flared up a little, and--and--" She paused and sighed again. "But finally they let me have my own way about it--though daddy called it 'infant tommyrot'--and so here it is!" She tilted up his head and looked into his eyes. "You, sir," she then went on--"you, sir, from this day and date--I reckon that is how daddy would say it--you, sir, from this day and date shall be known as Pat. Your name, sir, is Pat--P-a-t--Pat! I don't know whether you like it or not, of course! But I do know that I like it, and under the circumstances I reckon that's all that is necessary." Then came the tears. "But that isn't all, Pat dear," she went on, tenderly. "I have something else to tell you, though it hurts dreadfully for me to do it. But--but I'm going away to school. I'm going East, to be gone a long time. I want to go, though," she added, gazing soberly into his eyes; "yet I am afraid to leave you alone with Miguel. Miguel doesn't like to have you around, and I know it, and I am afraid he will be cruel to you. But--but I've got to go now. The dressmaker has been coming for over a month; and--and I'm not even coming home for vacation. I am to visit relatives, or something, in New York--or somewhere--and the whole thing is arranged. But I--I don't seem to want--to--to go away now!" Which was where the tears fell. "If things--things could only be--be put off! But I--I know they can't!" She