So it seemed for the moment, at any rate, when I woke that day in the familiar room above the river. I was as brisk and business-like as ever I had

been in a land where autumnal nights are frosty and morning air is crisp. "Well, well," I said, "that's over with at last. My ankle is quite mended now. I have carried out my intention of seeing a cane-harvestwhat an amusingly primitive little festival it was. I have killed the King, not without some risk to myself. Now I can tell Pedro to haul the prau down to the water once more, and I'll hoist that smoky-orange sail and go slanting away on an obedient tide, as free and purposeless as any sea-bird.

"Hm!" said I lazily, "there seems to be a joy in being unattached which nothing else can give. To wander always on and on and on, knowing one's self to be wholly unnecessary and irresponsible, to sleep where darkness overtakes one, and eat what the gods supply when they supply appetite.

"And yet," I mused, "I have also found a most agreeable half-freedom in the simple society of Felicidad. Upon my word," said I, "there goes our mortar, tuning up." I leaped out of bed, a thing not often done outside of books.

It was a glorious morning. The river was flowing silently, with wisps of mist curling above it. The sun was blazing above the distant rim of the sea. And the mortar boomed most musically.

But as I reached the window, it stopped all of a sudden. I looked down and saw my friend Maria standing as if petrified. A laugh was in a state of suspended animation on her broad, good-natured face.

After that first glance I too stifened into rigid attention.

For in front of big Maria stood little Pepita of the Saints, who with a gesture grandly menacing in its simple directness, raised a finger and drew it downwards through the air

in a manner which could well be called incisive.

Maria stared at the finger in fascination. "'Sus!" she muttered.

Like one in an evil dream she raised

her hand and rubbed her nose tender

ly. "Mari-i-i-a-y Jo-o-o-se!" she muttered, still staring in stony horror.

Once more Pepita parted the air with that incisive finger and Maria, like one hypnotized, walked away along the bank.

"Good morning, Brother D-jon," said Pepita, looking up as if nothing at all had happened.

"Good morning, little butterfly," said I absently, as I watched Maria pursue her somnambulistic way. "What in the world is happening to our friend?"

not to

Pepita gravely, "to learn "She is trying very hard," said laugh so much."

"She seems to be getting on well," said I, understanding then what it

was all about. "In what used to be my country I should say you had Maria bluffed."

"What is that?" she asked. "The same as frightened?"

"Yes," said I. "At least meaning she is afraid of your doing something you don't mean to do at all."

"Then," said Pepita very decidedly, "Maria is not what you call bluffed in your country."

I quite believed her. Suddenly I roused. "What did you call me just now?" I asked.

"I called you," she told me, "my big brother D-jon."

"I am both proud," said I, "and humble. But why this sudden elevation for me?" "What?"

"Why," I asked, "do I wake up on this brightest of mornings to find myself your brother? I've been your brother before, have I!"

"Oh!" cried Pepita reproachfully. "Have you forgotten what you said?"

"You flatter me," said I. "But

I'll go on. The next Pepita, then,

might have come to me in a dream. She had a face like a flower, or a cameo. I hardly know which to say. It was framed in a mass of the blackest, blackest hair, like midnight. There was a light lke starlight in her eyes. She was very gentle and pitying with my poor ankle, and-this is a secret-her lips-"

Pepita had the grace to lower the lashes over her dancing eyes then. But I could detect in her no sign of an impulse to run away.

"Tell me about the next one," she demanded.

"The next," said I, "was Pepita the Invisible. All I know of her is that she has a habit of avoiding her friends for no reason at all. Do you happen to know anything more about her? Where she lives, or why she is so timorous-"

"That," said Pepita impatiently, "is only three. Tell me about some

more.

"She isn't a very nice girl, is she?" said Pepita.

"Indeed she's not," said I. 'If she were to be here all the time, I should have to take the prau and go away. I can't endure that girl."

"I don't think I like her very much myself," said Pepita, unexpectedly. "Perhaps she won't come back. And who was the " she stopped to check her personalities off on her fingers-"who was the fifth, D-jon?"

"The fifth," said I, counting my own fingers, "is that minx, Pepita the Coquette, who now stands encouraging me to say pretty things.

My audience became all at once demure.

"That," it replied, "is something you'll have to find out for yourself, D-jon. I'm sure I don't know."

"But when I do," I asked, "would you like me to tell you all about her?"

"You'll never find out," said the audience lightly, "because you don't really want to know."

"Oh, yes, I do," said I. "And I warn you that I'm a very determined sort of person at finding out things."

My audience laughed and went lightheartedly about its work.

And I went suddenly and hurriedly about my dressing. For all at once I had discovered that there was something I must discuss with Don Feliciano without delay.

CHAPTER XVI.
Extempore.

"Well," said I to Don Feliciano, across the reposeful platter, I had deemed it better to postpone my talk with him till Dona Ceferina had drunk her chocolate and gone about the endless business of her household,-"Well, Don Feliciano, thanks first of all to your bravery, and then thanks to my injury, and then thanks to my habit of sticking by my decisions,-this seems to be a sort of General Thanksgiving,I have seen a cane-harvest at last.

And now that the harvest is over, my pleasant sojourn in Felicidad should be over, too, if I stand by the intention I had when I stayed for it."

The smile faded from Don Feliciano's lips. "I am sorry," he said simply, "that you should feel it a waste of time-"

I had to smile at that myself. "Is time so very precious, then?" I asked him. "On the contrary, Don Feliciano, I do not remember a month when I have seemed to live more sanely, more happily, and to better advantage than during this one when I have been your guest." "You put it very graciously," my host murmured. "I am greatly obliged to you. And that makes me all the sorrier—”

"I should be sorry, indeed," said I, "if you did not guess how much I owe to you and to Felicidad. I don't mind acknowledging to you that I came here a very idle and useless fellow, with very few attachments to my kind. But here I have formed attachments, and I have felt more perturbed than you can guess at the thought of breaking them." "Why break them then?" he asked me gently.

"My dear sir," I said, "that is what I have to tell you this morning. I am not going to break them. If you all will let me, I am going to stay on in Felicidad indefinitely."

When he had expressed his joy at that by grasping both my hands, I asked him whether he would like to know the reason for my staying. He nodded his assent.

"First of all, then," I said, "you must let me ask you whether the greatest need of every man is not some steady purpose in his life."

I must have been very solemn about it, for even as he told me gravely that he agreed with me and searched my face with his bright old eyes, he smiled very whimsically.

"Then," I said, smiling, too, yet quite in earnest, "Felicidad has done the greatest thing of all for me, for coming here with no purposes at all to steer by, I have one now. I had hardly set my foot here when I had an opportunity to do what I think I may call a useful act. And from it flowed a stream of consequences which gives me further opportunity for usefulness. Don Feliciano," I asked him, "is there any greater privilege or higher usefulness than to have a share in the molding of another's life?"

"It is indeed a privilege," said he. "A privilege so high," said I, "that it verges on a duty, though a pleasant one. Such a thing has become my duty, and I feel that I must stay on in Felicidad till it is done."

"My dear fellow," said Don Feliciano, leaning over to grasp my hands again, "if you could know the pleasure your decision will give to all of us!" He looked at me a moment, and in his eyes there woke most roguish laughter. "You haven't told me what the duty is which holds you," he remarked, "but if you should ask me to define it in one word, my choice of all the words there are would be-Pepita! Am I right?"

I had to laugh myself, his eyes were twinkling so. "Righto!" said I. "But tell me how you guessed?"

It was pleasant to hear Don Feliciano laugh at that. At last he wiped his eyes. "After all, why not?" he said. "You saved her life, and now-”

"Now I'll have a share in molding it."

"Quite right," he said again. "But may I ask if you have told this protege of yours-this-ward?"

"This godchild," I told him firmly. "I've often envied you your pleasant relations with your godchildren."

I really was afraid his laughter would be bad for him that time.

When at last he could speak steadily, he asked me whether I had yet decided into what mold my godchild's life was to be cast. He choked over the word; our eyes met; and we both laughed again.

"That's just the thing I want advice about," I told him. "To tell the truth, at present I am all at sea. I only know this much, that Pepita's future, since she is, or is to be, a woman, really resolves itself into the question of a husband for her. Am I right in thinking that?"

"Why do you ask?" said Don Feliciano a little wonderingly. "Did not God make women the bearers of children?"

"So He did," said I. "But there are people who would accuse us of being blindly masculine for remembering it."

But I

"Such people," said Don Feliciano, "must be very naive. am interrupting you."

"I interrupted myself," said I. "Don Feliciano, in the last analysis, it all comes down to the matter of those purple velvet slippers."

I thought he looked more than a trifle blank.

"Magenta-purple slippers," I reminded him. "You remember how strongly I objected to a pair of them once and to a custom of the country which would wed a girl them, even when she had not a magenta-purple mind?

"Now Pepita's mind is sunset purple, royal, mystic, touched with countless opalescent lights and tints and shades. And such a mind, with custom or against it, should wed with-forgive me if I mix my figures with riding-boots alone. Pepita's husband, when he comes, must a dolt. be a gentleman and not

Must, you hear me say. Behold me, Don Feliciano! I say 'must.' Her first reformer has come to Felicidad at last."

A little to my surprise, he seemed to weigh my words, instead of smil

ing at them. "It's not a wholly impossible idea," he said at last, "though of course it will raise a devil of a row among the women. Have you-have you seen the-the boots that suit you?"

"Not yet," I told him. "To drop the metaphor, I took occasion while we were sipping that chocolate there to run over in my mind the young gentlemen of Felicidad. I have al ready become a kind of betrousered dowager, I confess. And in all friendliness, I must say that not one of them seemed to me likely to make just the husband I consider suited to the thorny, fragile, wildrose-of-the-hedges sort of woman my foster-sister-my goddaughter, I mean-is going to be. Her husband," said I, musingly, "ought to be a strong but gentle man; tactful and yet masterful—”

Don Feliciano seemed very much amused again.

"-Unobtrusively masterful; serious in purpose, yet not a solemn, mirthless fellow; patient; infinitely kind, but still unchangeable in his beliefs and aims-"

"You paint a paragon of a husband," said Don Feliciano. "Surely you hardly hope to find him in a small place like Felicidad?"

"At least," said I, "I have the hopefulness of the young Senor Don Herbert Pocket."

"'Erbert Pocket?"

"He was a young man," I explained, "who had so strong an assurance that something would turn up eventually that no setback or disappointment could discourage him. But to come to my point-' I found it not so easy to come to, after all.

"You wish my assistancce in uncovering this paragon?" Don Feliciano prompted me.

"Oh, no, indeed," said I hurriedly. "No one else, not even you, understands her as I do. But to remain longer in Felicidad necessitates a