The big Indian stocked the car with gasoline from the tank behind the master’s house--a reservoir filled monthly from drums brought by ox cart from the distant railroad point--strapped canteens and oil containers on his running boards and was off. Don Padraic said nothing of the incident to his daughter. That night Don Padraic and Benicia sat in the candlelight of the big salon or living room which filled the space of one quadrangle off the patio. In all Sonora there was no counterpart of this chamber of mellowed antiquities, the collection of generations of the O’Donoju. Low ceiled and with crossing beams of oak, whereon the marks of the hewer’s adze showed like waves; walls hung with tapestries between the heavy frames of portraits of grandees and their ladies of forgotten days; a great fireplace wherein a man could stand upright, with its hand-wrought andirons and heavy crane shank; floor almost black from a hundred years of polishing and with the skins of animals floating there like so many islands:--here was a magic bit of old Spain lifted overseas to find root in the heart of the desert. Benicia, in a gown of rippling lines which left her strong young arms bare to the shoulder, was seated behind the great golden span of her harp. Candlelight falling across her shoulders made ivory the flesh of her bare arms as they moved rhythmically back and forth over the wilderness of strings. She was playing the Volga Boatsong, a peasant melody whose minors rose and fell to the sweep of oars. As the girl gave her heart to the music, the thrumming strings wove a picture of some barbaric steppe coming down to a sluggish river; boatmen chanting at the sweeps. The ancient room was a-thrill with resonance. She finished with just a breath of melody, the song of the boatmen dying in the distance. Her eyes fell on the face of her father; it was deeply etched by the play of flames from the mesquite logs in the fireplace. Always he sat this way, moveless before the fire, when she played on the great harp o’ nights, freeing his soul to drink in the melodies; but to Benicia’s understanding eyes appeared now the semblance of a deeper shadow not of the firelight. She softly left the instrument and stole over to nestle herself on the broad chair wing, with her coppery head laid against the snow white one. “_Pobrecito_”--this was her pet word carried through the years from childhood--“_Pobrecito_, thy face is as grave as the owl’s. Some secret? Remember, there are no secrets between us two--no worry which the other does not share.”