Farrel tossed an empty box against the door and invited the girl to
climb up on it and peer into the room. She did so. Instantly a
ferocious yell resounded from the semi-darkness within.

"Good gracious! Is that a ghost?" Kay cried, and leaped to the ground.

"No; confound it!" Farrel growled. "It's your Japanese cook. Pablo
locked him in there this morning, in order that Carolina might have a
clear field for her culinary art. Pablo!"

His cry brought an answering hail from Pablo, over at the barn, and
presently the old majordomo entered the compound. Farrel spoke sternly
to him in Spanish, and, with a shrug of indifference, Pablo unlocked
the door of the settlement-room and the Japanese cook bounded out. He
was inarticulate with frenzy, and disappeared through the gate of the
compound with an alacrity comparable only to that of a tin-canned dog.

"I knew he had been placed here temporarily," Don Miguel confessed,
"but I did think Pablo would have sense enough to let him out when
breakfast was over. I'm sorry."

"I'm not. I think that incident is the funniest I have ever seen," the
girl laughed. "Poor outraged fellow!"

"Well, if you think it's funny, so do I. Any sorrow I felt at your
cook's incarceration was due to my apprehension as to your feelings,
not his."

"What a fearful rage he is in, Don Mike!"