"My good Pablo, your great faith deserves a great reward. It is my wish that, to-night, you and Carolina shall drink one pint each to my health. Have you given some of this wine to the Parkers?"
"That fellow, _El Mono_, was desirous of serving some to his master, and demanded of me the key, which I refused. Later, Señor Parker made the same demand. Him I refused also. This made him angry, and he ordered me to depart from El Palomar. Naturally, I told him to go to the devil. Don Miguel, this gringo grub appears to be better than I had imagined."
Farrel had little appetite for food, but, to please Pablo, he drank the soup and toyed with a piece of toast and a glass of wine while the majordomo related to him the events which had taken place at El Palomar since that never-to-be-forgotten day when Tony Moreno had ridden in with the telegram from Washington.
"Your beloved father--may the smile of Jesus warm him!--said nothing when he read this accursed message, Don Miguel. For three days, he tasted no food; throughout the days he sat beside me on the bench under the catalpa tree, gazing down into the San Gregorio as if he watched for you to ride up the road. He shed no tears--at least, not in the presence of his servants--but he was possessed of a great trembling. At the end of the third day, I rode to the mission and informed Father Dominic. Ah, Don Miguel, my heart was afflicted tenfold worse than before to see that holy man weep for you. When he had wept a space, he ordered Father Andreas to say a high mass for the repose of your soul, while he came up to the hacienda to remind your father of the comforts of religion. Whereat, for the first time since that vagabond Moreno came with his evil tidings, your father smiled. 'Good Father Dominic,' said he, 'I have need of the comfort of your presence and your friendship, but I would not blot out with thoughts of religion the memory of the honor that has come upon my house. God has been good to me. To me has been given the privilege of siring a man, and I shall not affront him with requests for further favors. To-morrow, in El Toro, a general will pin on my breast the medal for gallantry that belongs to my dead son. As for this trembling, it is but a palsy that comes to many men of my age.'"