"Padre Dominic, my father, and I will, in all probability, get just a little bit jingled at dinner. After dinner, we'll sit on the porch flanking the patio and smoke cigars, and I'll smell the lemon verbena and heliotrope and other old-fashioned flowers modern gardeners have forgotten how to grow. About midnight, Father Dominic's brain will have cleared, and he will be fit to be trusted with his accursed automobile; so he will snort home in the moonlight, and my father will then carefully lock the patio gate with a nine-inch key. Not that anybody ever steals anything in our country, except a cow once in a while--and cows never range in our patio--but just because we're hell-benders for conforming to custom. When I was a boy, Pablo Artelan, our majordomo, always slept athwart that gate, like an old watchdog. I give you my word I've climbed that patio wall a hundred times and dropped down on Pablo's stomach without wakening him. And, for a quarter of a century, to my personal knowledge, that patio gate has supported itself on a hinge and a half. Oh, we're a wonderful institution, we Farrels!" "What did you say this Pablo was?" "He used to be a majordomo. That is, he was the foreman of the ranch when we needed a foreman. We haven't needed Pablo for a long time, but it doesn't cost much to keep him on the pay-roll, except when his relatives come to visit him and stay a couple of weeks." "And your father feeds them?" "Certainly. Also, he houses them. It can't be helped. It's an old custom." "How long has Pablo been a pensioner?" "From birth. He's mostly Indian, and all the work he ever did never hurt him. But, then, he was never paid very much. He was born on the ranch and has never been more than twenty miles from it. And his wife is our cook. She has relatives, too." The captain burst out laughing. "But surely this Pablo has some use," he suggested. "Well he feeds the dogs, and in order to season his _frijoles_ with the salt of honest labor, he saddles my father's horse and leads him round to the house every morning. Throughout the remainder of the day, he sits outside the wall and, by following the sun, he manages to remain in the shade. He watches the road to proclaim the arrival of visitors, smokes cigarettes, and delivers caustic criticisms on the younger generation when he can get anybody to listen to him." "How old is your father, Farrel?" "Seventy-eight." "And he rides a horse!" "He does worse than that." Farrel laughed. "He rides a horse that would police you, sir. On his seventieth birthday, at a rodeo, he won first prize for roping and hog-tying a steer." "I'd like to meet that father of yours, Farrel." "You'd like him. Any time you want to spend a furlough on the Palomar, we'll make you mighty welcome. Better come in the fall for the quail-shooting." He glanced at his wrist-watch and sighed. "Well, I suppose I'd do well to be toddling along. Is the captain going to remain in the service?"