“May I not tell you first, Consuelo,” Steven pleaded, “what befell me the night I was to have met you?” “I have already heard, señor,” she replied, with vast dignity. “It is unnecessary to speak of it further when time presses so. Señor, I have heard from my faithful Felicita that the father of the Americana, Señor Bragdon, has gone off to prospect for gold and silver, with the young one, the boy.” Steven nodded. “I know.” But Consuelo hurried on. “He is--he is to be followed, to be killed, you understand. To be gotten out of the way so that his daughter may be married by some one. The man has enemies. He is not pleasant, it seems, nor just. But the child will be left to perish if the man is killed.” “Who, who would do such a thing?” Steve gasped. “Murder, murder an innocent child!” Consuelo nodded violently; her hand clutched her throat; she could scarcely speak. “But they can be overtaken, for Juan knows how to follow by the river much faster than they can go by land. They go to the Silver Sand of which Don Tiburcio told us; and the men who follow left but this afternoon. Juan knows them. It is an even chance to overtake them, and buy them off, for they have been pledged silver. Or to overtake the Yanqui and save him.... Ess-tevan, will you go? “It is not for myself I ask this, señor, but for those who are dear to us both. I know no one else I can trust, but you and Juan.” She could whisper only. How tall, how fair, how fine, he looked standing there. And he loved the Yanqui girl; she had even refused Don Tiburcio for him. “Did we love one another I could not ask such a sacrifice, but”--she could not see the sudden hurt that came over the face of the tall youth before her--“but, for the sake of that girl and the boy you will go, you will follow Bragdon tonight, and save them if you can?” Steven would not have hesitated a moment in any event, except to learn the way to find a guide. “I will go,” he replied, “for the sake of the child and Hope Bragdon and--” he swayed toward her, and she, who had with difficulty restrained her sobs, toward him, but at his words she recoiled. Only the young, only first love, can be so mistaken. “Señorita,” Steven tried again, “when last we met I made you a promise that I was unable to carry out. Please----” A tiny light appeared in a window in the silent house at the garden’s end. Consuelo lifted a warning finger, and with a warm pressure upon his hand fled down the banks of the irrigating ditch and disappeared within the shadow of the tamaracks. Steven heard Juan whistle on the other side of the wall and vaulted over quickly. They walked rapidly up the street. In his rooms Steven wrote a note to his father, another to Doña Katarina. There was nothing to write to Consuelo; she did not love him.