She watched the nodding plumes till they were out of sight. How strangely death had drawn together the three that life had separated! In six months the woman and two men, tied together by a twist of the hand of Fate, had been summoned, one after the other, into the darkness beyond. Would they meet there? Mariposa shuddered and turned away. The black plumes had disappeared, but the music still boomed fitfully in measured majesty. The whistles were blowing for midday when she retraced her steps to the Garcia house. As she mounted the stairs to the front door she became aware that there were several people grouped on the balcony, their forms dimly visible through the grimy glass and behind the rampart of long-stemmed geraniums that grew there in straggling neglect. The opening of the outer door let her in on them. She started and slightly changed color when she saw that one of the figures was that of Gamaliel Barron. He was sitting on the arm of a dilapidated rocker, frowningly staring at Benito, the younger Garcia boy, against whom, it appeared, a charge of some moment had just been brought. The case was being placed before Barron, who evidently acted as judge, by a person Mariposa had not seen before--a tall, thin young man of some thirty years, with a stoop in the shoulders, a shock of fine black hair, and a pair of very soft and beautiful blue eyes. They were so preoccupied in the matter before them that no effort was made to introduce the stranger to Mariposa, though Barron offered her his armchair, retiring to a seat on the balcony railing, whence he loomed darkly severe, from among the straggling geraniums. Benito, in his sailor collar and wispy curls, maintained an air of smiling innocence, but Miguel, the elder boy, who was an interested witness, bore evidence of uneasiness of mind in the strained attention of the face turned toward Barron. Mariposa paused, her hand on the back of the rocking-chair. Benito had already inserted himself into her affections. She looked from one to the other to ascertain his offense. Both men were regarding the culprit, Barron with frowning disapproval, the other with eyes full of amusement. It was he who proceeded to state the case against the accused: “She leaned over the railing and said to me, ‘Them little boys will be sick if they eat that crab.’ ‘What crab and what little boys?’ I asked, quite innocently, and she answered, ‘Them little boys in the vacant lot!’ Then I turned and saw Benito and Miguel squatting in the grass among the tomato cans and fragments of the daily press, with a crab that they were breaking up between them, a crab about as big as a cart-wheel.” “We found it there,” said Benito. “It were just lying there.” “‘If they eat that crab,’ the lady continued, ‘they’ll be sick. It ain’t no good. I threw it out myself. And I’ve been hollerin’ to them to stop, and that little one with the curls, just turned round on me and says, “Oh, you go to the devil!”’”