As the hot afternoon wore on the house of Don Anabel lay steeped in its customary respite from the trials of this world. The rooms were silent, deep in siesta. Lupe slept, Doña Gertrudis snored, Consuelo tossed. But there was one who did not take siesta. A figure stood in the darkened sala in stockinged feet, motionless. There was not a sound. Good; the family slept. Consuelo, however, was finding no repose that hot September afternoon. Something urged her out into the patio. The smell of water on earth came refreshingly to her aching head. She leaned against the leafy trellis of the trumpet vines, looking idly beyond toward an open window of the sala. Who had carelessly left it open during the heat? A moving shadow caught her eye. Quick as a flash she slipped along the wall and peered round the casement. Ah, it was only Luis. What was he doing, thrusting out that long rolled-up package through the window bars so quietly. Before Consuelo could speak a waiting hand had grasped the package and Luis had slipped into his shoes and stepped quickly through the _zaguan_ to his own room. Consuelo, left alone, returned to hers. She did not dress that afternoon. Her pillow was wet with tears when Felicita crept in again. As the woman moved softly about the room, pouring out the tepid water from Consuelo’s silver basin, laying away her clothes in the carven chest, she talked in a low voice. At what she had to say Consuelo sat bolt upright, clenching the down pillow in her fists, her face paling with new misery. Then she sank back with a moan, covering her eyes. “Felicita, it cannot be true. Luis! What will he do next! Tell me, tell me carefully.” Luis had sent two men after the Yankee Bragdon, who had gone South prospecting, to overtake and kill him. He wanted to get him out of the way so that he could have the daughter. It was revenge, too, Felicita said. The Yankee trader had insulted Luis unforgivably. The little boy? Well, if he died or if he survived it did not matter. He would be abandoned. They would not actually kill him. But the stain of foul murder would be on Luis’s soul. Luis, he was only twenty. How happily they had played together on the banks of the stream such a few short years ago. Luis had always been kind to her then. She looked up to him, was so proud of him, and suffered so when he was punished. A rush of feeling from deep wells within her rose--tenderness for Luis, a weakness toward his sins. Then suddenly something else smote her. He must be saved from this. And the little boy, the helpless little boy, he must be saved. She had a plan. “Quick, Felicita. Come, we will go to Father Filemon Hubert. He will tell me what to do.” Vespers was tolling from the old bell as they ascended the steps of the church at the end of the plaza.