Keith rolled a cigarro, and did not notice that the old man's hand trembled as he did the same, and that his eyes were striving in vain to appear careless. "My Spanish was pretty queer those days, and I did not grasp the details of the story. You find all sorts of half-buried towns and temples and palaces in the country--queer places no one on earth can tell who built. But the temple was a plain fact. Stonework cut for all the world like that," he added, pointing to the gray Mission ruin. "Zig-zags on the cornices and Aztec suns just the same over the portals. There were great old walls left, but no roof. Trees grew all through it, and right in the open was something like a bench covered with queer Indian figures of fight, and sacrifices, and the only one I ever saw down there carved out of marble." "Yes--a bench of marble!" Alvara was listening intently, nodding his head, and forgetting to smoke. "Well, an old miner down there told me a lurid story of the last Indian sacrifice offered up on that altar. He found the body and helped to bury it--the name was Estevan." "It is a good name," said the old man. "Fine! but wherever he had lived he was used to a different sort of woman from the one he met at the old temple. She was of pure Spanish and Aztec stock. The women in those temples don't usually appear to count, but she came of a long line of Aztec priests. After the Catholic Church got hold of them, they became Catholic priests instead of Aztec ones, and served the same God under a different name." "So?" remarked Alvara. "It seems Estevan drifted into the country with considerable money--cattle-man, I think; anyway, he had a ranch of some sort--and fell dead in love with the sister of one of these hereditary priests, and they were married. The old miner said a lot of queer old Indians gathered from the Lord only knew where, and had a great bonfire and crazy dances and ceremonies at the temple the night she was married. They were waiting for a new priest of their own old religion to be born some day and every marriage in that family was of interest." "Well?" "Well--I don't know how to make clear that there are wives in the world to whom brown girls in the willows are--well--they are absolutely taboo to the husbands--understand?" Alvara nodded silently. "This Estevan was not used to women like that. He was crazy over the priest's sister till he got her, and then he was like many other men--he went back to the brown girls." "And then?"