“I am not educated as you are,” Inez replied. “I was at school in Stockton two years and have been to school winters in Santa Barbara and here. The rest I learned from father and mother. She had been in a convent and taught me Spanish;—that was her language. She spoke English brokenly, but so prettily. Tom brings me books to read and I know all about the east where father is to take me some day when we are able to stop at first-class hotels as guests. I am afraid, though, it will be a long time before we go. Father’s business is not always very good.” “What did you say it was?” Fanny asked, and Inez replied, “Exchange of property. I don’t know what that means, exactly, and when I asked Tom he said I hadn’t brain enough to understand it, if he explained. He likes to tease me.” There was beginning to dawn upon Fanny a suspicion of the relation in which Tom stood to Inez, but she made no comment, and Inez continued: “I wish you knew father, he is so handsome for a man nearly fifty, and so kind to everybody. They worship him in the Yosemite and depend upon him a great deal. When a stage has been robbed he always gives his services to find the robbers. They have caught one or two who are in prison now, but they can get no clew to the men who have been such a terror to the neighborhood.” “Oh,” Fanny gasped, “you frighten me so. Mother and I are going to the Yosemite in June and I should die if the stage I was in was stopped.” “I shouldn’t,” Inez replied. “I have been on the road with father a good many times and nothing happened, but if there did I shouldn’t be afraid. I’d fly at the robber and try to kill him. Father laughs when I talk that way and says there is murder in my Gypsy blood. Perhaps there is. Any way I would not hesitate to kill a man who was robbing a coach. I’d shoot him like a dog.” Her mood had changed as she talked. The softness had left her eyes which blazed and flashed defiantly, and she took a turn or two across the room as if she were in fancy battling with some desperado. “Don’t look so fierce. You scare me,” Fanny said, when Inez came back and resumed her chair. “Do I? I cannot tell you how I feel when I think of the bandits who make our beautiful valley a dread to tourists who visit it. But they may not be there at all this summer. Don’t worry about them. Leave your valuables here, especially your diamonds, if you have any. Then, if you are held up you have not so much to lose. If I knew when you were coming I believe I’d meet you in Milton, where you take the stage, or have father do it. He isn’t afraid. He goes home to-morrow or next day. Tom has already gone. I go in two or three weeks. You must come to our cottage. It is lovely.”