A pair of blue eyes laughed down at her knowingly. “Punish him well!” whispered Señorita Roberta, and slipped a band from a finger. “Here--take this one with a green stone. It will make him _terribly_ jealous!” Then she rode to where Señor John was painting beneath the empty belfry in the shadow of the chapel wall. Putting on the borrowed ring Paloma hastened to dress herself with great care. After which, strolling carelessly, she made through the sunlight to the store. The man who kept the store was young, but with the pallid skin and sad, hollow eyes that denote a mortal illness. He could move about but slowly in the little room, and take down and display and put away only with much effort. As he waited upon her, Paloma walked to and fro with a gay step, all the while talking: “Show me the calico with the yellow flower, señor. Yes--a yard, please. Did you hear that Señor Gordon is to paint me? Well, he is--and with the padre’s peacock. I am to wear a certain white dress that I shall not use for the purpose it was once intended. No; I shall buy another white dress--very soon, I think--a much richer dress. And, look, señor, is this ring not beautiful? The stone came from beyond the Pacific Ocean.” Behind the stove, as she sauntered about, boasting, sat a figure wrapped to the ears in a torn serape. But the figure did not move, or appear to see, or even so much as cough. “Yes,” babbled Paloma, “first I’m to be put in a picture. Then--who knows?--I may go on a long trip. Oh, farther than Albuquerque, señor. Yes, one spool of white thread, very fine. I may even go as far as Chicago.” She tossed her pretty head with meaning. “A girl cannot always live in Los Morales,” she added. “It is but a poor place.” Thereupon, she gathered up her packages, put down some coins upon the counter, gave the sick young man a saucy smile, and went out. Perhaps it was ten--perhaps fifteen--minutes later when Anastacio rose from his seat by the stove. A change had come over him--a change that was not good to see. His thin face was as ghastly white as the face of the man behind the counter. Out of it gleamed his black eyes, which were so wide open that each was rimmed with white. And his lips were purple under his long moustache and parted to show the line of his set, white teeth. Now his hat was not hiding his forehead, but back upon his shining hair; nor was the torn serape about his shoulders--it was wound around his left arm. He went down through the village, out upon the path which led to the chapel, along this to where Señor John was still painting under the belfry, and so on to the ford, where he disappeared from sight under the high bank that stood a little way back from the river. * * * * *