The day had begun warm and still, and the noon had been hot, without a breath of air to stir the drooping flowers in Father José’s garden or wave the bright fan of the strutting peacock. But at the middle of the afternoon black clouds suddenly lowered upon river and town, dropping from off the high dirt-cliffs to the west, and bringing twilight with them. A gusty wind marshalled the clouds along, bent the reeds in the marsh, drove through the winding streets of the pueblo and caught at the blankets of the Indians who were scurrying to cover, and brushed all the surface of the river into a white lather. Then came great drops of rain. Señor John fled into Father José’s kitchen. “Do you think I’d better start home now?” he inquired, “or wait a while?” “Wait,” advised the father. “There will be _tamales_ for supper, and a loaf of bread heated with butter. After a day like this one, señor, the storm soon passes.” But as night came on swiftly the wind grew to a gale and the rain began to drive, beating upon the panes of the wide-ledged window like whips of grass. Señor John ate his supper in silence, getting up nervously every now and then to open the front door a trifle in order to look out, or he shaded his eyes from the lamplight as he peered through the window. The father touched little food, and following supper took his seat in the cane chair before the open grate of his stove--his head lowered and his eyes closed. Before long the young painter could not contain his impatience further. “I think I’d better start,” he said. “It doesn’t act like quitting for sometime.” Father José rose. “Why go home to-night?” he asked. “You will not be able to see the cross on the other side, señor. You are welcome here.” “Oh, I must get over somehow. They would worry about me.” The father looked grave. “The storm still increases,” he said. The rain was coming in sheets against the window now, but at short intervals, so that it was as if a white wraith were returning noisily again and again to peer through the blurred glass. The blue blinds outside the father’s bedchamber were banging forward and back with a rattle of loose laths. Upon the level roof overhead sounded the unbroken roar of the tempest. “A cloudburst and a hurricane,” went on the father. He also opened the front door a little to look out. “I have never seen its like before, señor. They will surely not expect you to brave this.” The young painter’s face had grown suddenly anxious. “But _she_ might try to come--looking for me,” he said. “Señorita Roberta? No. She knows how dangerously the river rises in a storm and how the sands shift.” Señor John was pulling his soft hat down to his ears. “You said yourself, though, father, that she doesn’t know what it means to be afraid of the Rio Grande. I _must_ go. My horse is all right. He’ll take me over.” “Do not risk it,” advised Father José. “Listen!” And he held up a finger.