"There was something in that man, too," he reflected. "It's unfortunate that he allowed his desire to humiliate you and me to drive him into such folly. If he'd only have held those brigands here for the civil authorities, as I requested, we could have forgotten the rest." "Yes, father says that would have saved him in his eyes, in spite of his scheming with Chadron against your life, and against father's honor and all that he holds sacred. But it's done, and he's genuinely despised in the service for it. And there's the ambulance coming over the hill." "Ambulance for me!" said he, in disgust of his slow mending. "Be glad that it isn't--oh, I shouldn't say that!" "I am," said he, nodding his slow, grave head. "We'll have to say good-bye to Mrs. Chadron," said she, bustling around, or making a show of doing so to hide the tears which had sprung into her eyes at the thought that it might have been a different sort of conveyance coming to Alamito to take Alan Macdonald away. "And to Alamito," said he, looking out into the frost-stricken garden with a tenderness in his eyes. "I shall always have a softness in my heart for Alamito, because it gave me you. That garden out there yielded me the dearest flower that any garden ever gave a man"--he took her hands, and folded them above his heart--"a flower with a soul in it to keep it alive forever." She bowed her head as he spoke, as if receiving a benediction. "I hate saying good-bye to Mrs. Chadron," she said, her voice trembling, "for she'll cry, and I'm afraid I'll cry, too." "It will not be farewell, only _hasta luego_[A] we can assure her of that. We'll be neighbors to her, for this is home, dear heart, this is our _val paraiso_." "Our valley of paradise," she nodded, her hands reaching up to his shoulders and clinging there a moment in soft caress, "our home!" His arm about her shoulders, he faced her to the window, and pointed to the hills, asleep now in their brown winter coat behind a clear film of smoky blue. "I stood up there one evening, weighted down with guns and ammunition, hunting and hunted in the most desperate game I ever played," he said. "The sun was low over this valley, and Alamito was a gleam of white among the autumn gold. I was tired, hungry, dusty, thirsty and sore, and my heart was all but dead in its case. That was after you had sent me away from the post, scorned and half despised." "Don't rebuke me for that night now, Alan," she pleaded, turning her pained eyes to his. "I have suffered for my injustice."