The sound of youthful laughter had come from the bottom of the lane, where Susy Peyton and Mary Rogers, just alighted from the coach, in the reaction of their previous constrained attitude, were flying hilariously into view.

A slight embarrassment crossed Peyton's face; a still deeper flush of anger overspread Pedro's sullen cheek.
Then Pedro found tongue again, his native one, rapidly, violently, half incoherently.

"Ah, yes! It had come to this.

It seems he was not a vacquero, a companion of the padrone on lands that had been his own before the Americanos robbed him of it, but a servant, a lackey of muchachas, an attendant on children to amuse them, or--why not ?--an appendage to his daughter's state! Ah, Jesus Maria! such a state! such a muchacha! A picked-up foundling--a swineherd's daughter--to be ennobled by his, Pedro's, attendance, and for whose vulgar, clownish tricks,--tricks of a swineherd's daughter,--he, Pedro, was to be brought to book and insulted as if she were of Hidalgo blood! Ah, Caramba! Don Juan Peyton would find he could no more make a servant of him than he could make a lady of her!" The two young girls were rapidly approaching.

Judge Peyton spurred his horse beside the vacquero's, and, swinging the long thong of his bridle ominously in his clenched fingers, said, with a white face:-- "Vamos!" Pedro's hand slid towards his sash.