trying to break away from two maroons and a claybank girl.

"The alcalde leads me up to Anabela and presents me. When she took
the first look at my face she dropped her fan and nearly turned her
chair over from the shock. But I'm used to that.

"I sat down by her, and began to talk. When she heard me speak she
jumped, and her eyes got as big as alligator pears. She couldn't
strike a balance between the tones of my voice and face I carried.
But I kept on talking in the key of C, which is the ladies' key; and
presently she sat still in her chair and a dreamy look came into her
eyes. She was coming my way. She knew of Judson Tate, and what a
big man he was, and the big things he had done; and that was in my
favour. But, of course, it was some shock to her to find out that I
was not the pretty man that had been pointed out to her as the great
Judson. And then I took the Spanish language, which is better than
English for certain purposes, and played on it like a harp of a
thousand strings. I ranged from the second G below the staff up to
F-sharp above it. I set my voice to poetry, art, romance, flowers,
and moonlight. I repeated some of the verses that I had murmured to
her in the dark at her window; and I knew from a sudden soft sparkle
in her eye that she recognized in my voice the tones of her midnight
mysterious wooer.

"Anyhow, I had Fergus McMahan going. Oh, the vocal is the true
art--no doubt about that. Handsome is as handsome palavers. That's
the renovated proverb.

"I took Señorita Anabela for a walk in the lemon grove while Fergus,
disfiguring himself with an ugly frown, was waltzing with the