"Don Abel Hudson, you do not look so gallant as at the ball last night, but you helped us to get there, and I will save you now. Get into the wagon, and take care you crawl in like a snake that you may not be seen." "No--no!" cried the two older women, but in truth they were too terrified not to submit. Power swung himself mechanically over the wheel, and lay on the floor of the wagon. Eulogia, in spite of a protesting whimper from Aunt Anastacia, loosened that good dame's ample outer skirt and threw it over the fallen bandit. Then the faithful Benito turned his horse and drove as rapidly toward the town as the rough roads would permit. They barely had started when they heard a great shouting behind them, and turned in apprehension, whilst the man on the floor groaned aloud in his fear. But the Vigilantes rode by them unsuspecting. Across their saddles they carried the blackened and dripping bodies of Lenares and his lieutenants; through the willows galloped the caballeros in search of John Power. But they did not find him, then nor after. Doña Pomposa hid him in her woodhouse until midnight, when he stole away and was never seen near San Luis again. A few years later came the word that he had been assassinated by one of his lieutenants in Lower California, and his body eaten by wild hogs. IX "Al contado plasentero Del primer beso de amor, Un fuego devorador Que en mi pecho siento ardor. "Y no me vuelvas a besar Por que me quema tu aliento, Ya desfayeserme siento, Mas enbriagada de amor. "Si a cuantas estimas, das Beso en pruebas de amor; Si me amas hasme el favor De no besarme jamas." A caballero on a prancing horse sang beneath Eulogia's window, his jingling spurs keeping time to the tinkling of his guitar. Eulogia turned over in bed, pulling the sheet above her ears, and went to sleep. The next day, when Don Tomas Garfias asked her hand of her mother, Doña Coquetta accepted him with a shrug of her shoulders. "And thou lovest me, Eulogia?" murmured the enraptured little dandy as Doña Pomposa and Aunt Anastacia good-naturedly discussed the composition of American pies. "No." "Ay! señorita! Why, then, dost thou marry me? No one compels thee." "It pleases me. What affair of thine are my reasons if I consent to marry you?" "Oh, Eulogia, I believe thou lovest me! Why not? Many pretty girls have done so before thee. Thou wishest only to tease me a little." "Well, do not let me see too much of you before the wedding-day, or I may send you back to those who admire you more than I do." "Perhaps it is well that I go to San Francisco to remain three months," said the young man, sulkily; he had too much vanity to be enraged. "Wilt thou marry me as soon as I return?" "As well then as any other time."