usual serious salutation, and made way for him with a certain
respect. Avoiding the few narrow streets of the little town, he
pursued his way meditatively along the highroad, returning to the
hotel after an hour's ramble, as the evening stage-coach had
deposited its passengers and departed.

"There's a lady waiting to see you upstairs," said the landlord
with a peculiar smile. "She rather allowed it wasn't the proper
thing to see you alone, or she wasn't quite ekal to it, I reckon,
for she got my Polly to stand by her."

"Your Polly, good Jenkinson?" said Don Jose interrogatively.

"My darter, Don Jose."

"Ah, truly! I am twice blessed," said Don Jose, gravely ascending
the staircase.

On entering the room he perceived a tall, large-featured woman with
an extraordinary quantity of blond hair parted on one side of her
broad forehead, sitting upon the sofa. Beside her sat Polly
Jenkinson, her fresh, honest, and rather pretty face beaming with
delighted expectation and mischief. Don Jose saluted them with a
formal courtesy, which, however, had no trace of the fact that he
really did not remember anything of them.

"I called," said the large-featured woman with a voice equally
pronounced, "in reference to a request from you, which, though
perhaps unconventional in the extreme, I have been able to meet by
the intervention of this young lady's company. My name on this