One day the robin did not come. That night, through the open windows of the front room, passers-by could see a table covered with a folded sheet. A very small table--it did not need to be large; but the bed had been taken out of the small, mean room to give space to those who came to look at the poor, little, pinched face under a square of pink mosquito bar. There were lighted candles at the head and feet. Moths, flying in and out of the wide open window, fluttered about the flames. The rose-colored dress had been exchanged for one that was white and stiffly starched. Above the wee gray face was a wreath of artificial orange blossoms, but the wasted baby-fingers had been closed upon some natural sprays of lovely white hyacinths. The cloying sweetness of the blossoms mingled with the odor of cigarette smoke coming from the farther corners of the room, and the smell of a flaring kerosene lamp which stood near the window. It flickered uncertainly in the breeze, and alternately lighted or threw into shadow the dark faces clustered about the doorway of the second room. Those who in curiosity lingered for a moment outside the little adobe house could hear voices speaking in the soft language of Spain. To them who peered within with idle interest, it was “only some Mexican woman’s baby dead.” Tomorrow, in a little white-painted coffin, it would be born down the long street, past the saloons and shops where the idle and the curious would stare at the procession. Over the bridge across the now muddy river they would go to the unfenced graveyard on the bluff, and there the little dead mite of illegitimacy would be lowered into the dust from whence it came. Then each mourner in turn would cast a handful of earth into the open grave, and the clods would rattle dully on the coffin lid. (Ah, pobre, pobre Lucas!) Then they would come away, leaving Carmelita’s baby there underground. Carmelita herself was now sitting apathetically by the coffin. She dully realized what tomorrow was to be; but she could not understand what this meant. She had cried a little at first, but now her eyes were dry. Still, she was sorry--it had been such a good little baby, and no trouble at all! “A good niña, and never sick; such a good little ’Stacia!” she murmured. Carmelita felt very sorry for herself. Outside, in the darkness of the summer night, Lucas sat on the kitchen porch leaning his head against the empty high chair of the pobrecita, and sobbed as if his heart would break. * * * * * That had happened in August. Through September, pretty Carmelita cried whenever she remembered what a good baby the little Anastacia had been. Then Josefa began coming to the house again to play “coyote y gallos” with her, so that she forgot to cry so often.