It is an affair of the house." But this brought Clarence down like a bombshell among them, not to be overlooked in his equal command of their tongue and of them.

"Ah! come, now.

What drunken piggishness is this?
Speak!" "The padron has been--perhaps--thrown," stammered the first speaker.
"His horse arrives,--but he does not.

We go to inform the senora." "No, you don't! mules and imbeciles! Do you want to frighten her to death?
Mount, every one of you, and follow me!" The men hesitated, but for only a moment.

Clarence had a fine assortment of Spanish epithets, expletives, and objurgations, gathered in his rodeo experience at El Refugio, and laid them about him with such fervor and discrimination that two or three mules, presumably with guilty consciences, mistaking their direction, actually cowered against the stockade of the corral in fear.