“Now! _now!_” cried Rafael, and whisked the red cap off the stone, which looked--precisely as it had looked before. Not one flake of puffy crust, not one white, tempting crumb betrayed whatever change might have come to pass under that magic covering. The children fell flat on their stomachs on either side of this doubtful substance and first Rafael, then Pilarica, thrust out a red tongue and licked it cautiously. The taste was gritty. Rafael tried to take a bite, but his white young teeth slipped helplessly off the flinty surface. The boy squatted back on his heels, his small fists clenched, and glared darkly out before him. “Perhaps one of the others--” faltered Pilarica. “They are all alike,” interrupted Rafael, in a voice harsh with mounting anger. “They are stones, just stones, and they always will be stones. I knew it all the time.” “Our rolls are very, very hard once in a while,” ventured the little girl again, but this remark was met with scornful silence. “Or I might hunt for a toad,” she persisted, dismayed by Rafael’s sombre stare. “Toads are much softer than stones, and perhaps--” But the boy had bounded to his feet and was stamping furiously upon the magic cap. “The gypsy is a humbug, and the cap is a humbug,” he exclaimed chokingly, “and I have been cheated out of my watch and chain,--my silver watch and chain that my father gave me. I will not bear it. I am going down the hill to meet Rodrigo, and he will make that lying old thief give them back to me.” And without another glance toward the little sister whom he had so loftily taken under his protection, Rafael, bare-headed, dashed away and disappeared down the steep avenue by which Rodrigo usually came home from the Institute. The tears trembled for a moment on Pilarica’s long eyelashes, as she found herself thus forsaken, but she was a practical little person on occasion, as the sisters of impulsive brothers needs must be, and so she picked up the red fez, brushed away the dust, folded it neatly and hid it in her bodice. Then she scattered the stones far and wide, so that Rafael might not come upon that unlucky row again and be stung by the reminder of his loss.