The last was aimed at a figure approaching from the town. It was Anastacio, bound riverward, his serape so far across his face that only his gleaming eyes showed from under his wide and heavy sombrero. He strode past slowly, those eyes now upon Señor John, now upon Paloma and the running deer. Behind him, riding at a distance, came the girl on the spotted mustang. Paloma redoubled her laughter and her merry cries and Señor John joined his laughter to hers and leaned his arms on the pickets of the gate. She called upon him to testify that Miguel was a very goat. She pursued the little animal more fleetly, lashing out at him so smartly with a broken rose-spray that the peacock retired to the wide stone-step, and let fall the glory of his train. Around and around she tore, her cheeks scarlet as her shoulder-shawl, her black eyes dancing, her hair whipping out behind, her teeth gleaming like a score of pearls as white as that one in her ring. All at once, spent with her running and shouting, and almost choking with her mirth, she turned to the gate to find that Señor John was no longer there, but was now standing between the garden and the river, talking to the girl on the spotted mustang; while Anastacio had disappeared entirely--under the high bank that stood back from the strip of gently sloping beach. Paloma’s face fell, her eyes stared, her head came up resentfully. Then she walked over to Miguel, seized him by a narrow strap about his neck, gave him a cuff to quiet him, and jerked him, struggling, out of the yard. * * * * * It happened the very next morning. Señor John was in the garden, sketching the peacock, and humming the song of the sun and the moon and the veil as he sketched, and Father José was close by, busy with the roses, a violet-bordered square of black silk tied over his ears, and his hands full of dislodged pickets and lengths of string. Suddenly they heard the screams of a girl--screams sharp with grief--then, wild broken cries--“Padre! Oh! oh! _Mamita! Dios!_ It is blood!” “Señor John!” called the father. “Something unlucky has befallen Miguel. Come!” They hurried into the kitchen by one door and out of it by another and along the path that led back of the chapel. A middle-aged lady was standing beside the path--a bareheaded, fat lady, whose face, though gentle and somewhat dirty, suggested the round face of Paloma; with her was Paloma--her head upon her mother’s breast, and her form shaking with tempestuous sobs. At their feet, on the smooth-packed ground, was a little round dark pool. “It is as I feared,” said the father, when he stopped and looked down. “Here are some yellow-grey hairs, and here, cloven hoof-marks.” Paloma, seeing out of one eye that Señor John was present, now began to wail more vigorously than before. “O my Miguel!” she exclaimed. “You were so pretty and so good! O _padrecito_, he but pruned the roses!”