“Mateo,” said Mrs. Golinda, after Dean had noticed and commented upon him, “let us show Mr. Wolcott how seriously he takes his position. You see, Mr. Wolcott, Mateo had Lobo before he had me and Lobo wishes that point to be very clear. He likes me--he is even fond of me--but he considers me simply another of his master’s possessions, and a later and less important one.” “_Dame tu mano_,” said the Spaniard, softly, reaching his brown and work-hardened hand across the table to his wife, who laid her own within it. Instantly the dog arose, the pupils of his golden eyes contracting, and went close to Margaret Golinda, growling. When she drew her hand away he ceased growling and wagged his plumy tail, slowly, approvingly, and after an instant, to make sure the incident would not be repeated, he returned to his place. “You see?” said his mistress, laughing. “Lobo likes women as many persons like dogs--‘in their place!’” Dean Wolcott felt his throat tighten, suddenly, but it was not because of Lobo’s jealous fealty; it was because these people who had worked unceasingly for years to win a livelihood from their steep and stubborn acres, who had sometimes seen only each other for weeks on end, whose existence was narrow and circumscribed, according to the ordinary standard, had kept the gleam alight; still said--“Give me your hand.” And--good heavens--how they _had_ given each other a hand, late and early, in good weather and bad weather, in rich seasons and barren seasons; it was sign and symbol. Now the ranch was almost clear; now Mateo Golinda spoke a careful and correct English and his wife a fluent Spanish; now, year by year, something of comfort was added, something of hardship was conquered. It was a thing to have seen; a thing to remember. They set him on his way in the pearly morning, and not by look or word did Margaret Golinda betray her knowledge of his condition on arriving the day before. When he had tried the second time to explain she had stopped him again. “It was odd that you’d been thinking of that old thing--I expect you learned it in the grammar grades as I did?--for it had come into my mind just a few days ago, when I was watching the sheep for Mateo. One remembers the old things, in places like this!” And when he rode away they called after him to come soon again, to make them a regular port of call. There was no need to urge him; the weathered gray house on the high hill above the sea would always spell sanctuary to him; it would always be what he would have called, twenty years earlier, “King’s X!” That afternoon he wrote to an old Harvard friend who lived in San Francisco and was ardently interested in a troop of Boy Scouts in one of the poorer portions of the city; he had stopped over with him for two days on his way to Monterey.