It was a Senor Van Loo--Don Paul the boy called him, and they talked of the boy's studies in the old days as if--indeed, but for the stranger being a caballero and man of the world--as if he had been his teacher." It was a proof of the intensity of the father's feelings that they had passed beyond the power of his usual coarse, brutal expression, and he only stared at the priest with a dull red face in which the blood seemed to have stagnated.

Presently he said thickly, "When did he come ?" "A few days ago." "Which way did Eddy go ?" "To Brown's Mills, scarcely a league away.

He will be here--even now--on the instant.

But the senor will come into the refectory and take some of the old Mission wine from the Catalan grape, planted one hundred and fifty years ago, until the dear child returns.

He will be so happy." "No! I'm in a hurry.