“And took thee away again, and I saw thee not till thou camest with Antonio, over a year ago, to the cattle branding.  And now, my Pancho, I may never see thee again.”  She buried her face in her hands and sobbed aloud.

The little acolyte tried to comfort her, but with such abstraction of manner and inadequacy of warmth that she hastily removed his caressing hand.

“But why?  What has happened?” he asked eagerly.

The girl’s manner had changed.  Her eyes flashed, and she put her brown fist on her waist and began to rock from side to side.

“But I’ll not go,” she said viciously.

“Go where?” asked the boy.

“Oh, where?” she echoed, impatiently.  “Hear me, Francisco; thou knowest I am, like thee, an orphan; but I have not, like thee, a parent in the Holy Church.  For, alas,” she added, bitterly, “I am not a boy, and have not a lovely voice borrowed from the angels.  I was, like thee, a foundling, kept by the charity of the reverend fathers, until Don Juan, a childless widower, adopted me.  I was happy, not knowing and caring who were the parents who had abandoned me, happy only in the love of him who became my adopted father.  And now—­” She paused.

“And now?” echoed Francisco, eagerly.

“And now they say it is discovered who are my parents.”

“And they live?”

“Mother of God! no,” said the girl, with scarcely filial piety.  “There is some one, a thing, a mere Don Fulano, who knows it all, it seems, who is to be my guardian.”

“But how? tell me all, dear Juanita,” said the boy with a feverish interest, that contrasted so strongly with his previous abstraction that Juanita bit her lips with vexation.

“Ah!  How?  Santa Barbara! an extravaganza for children.  A necklace of lies.  I am lost from a ship of which my father—­Heaven rest him—­is General, and I am picked up among the weeds on the sea-shore, like Moses in the bulrushes.  A pretty story, indeed.”

“Oh, how beautiful!” exclaimed Francisco, enthusiastically.  “Ah, Juanita, would it had been me.”

“Thee!” said the girl bitterly,—­“thee!  No!—­it was a girl wanted.  Enough, it was me.”

“And when does the guardian come?” persisted the boy, with sparkling eyes.

“He is here even now, with that pompous fool the American alcalde from Monterey, a wretch who knows nothing of the country or the people, but who helped the other American to claim me.  I tell thee, Francisco, like as not it is all a folly, some senseless blunder of those Americanos that imposes upon Don Juan’s simplicity and love for them.”

“How looks he, this Americano who seeks thee?” asked Francisco.

“What care I how he looks,” said Juanita, “or what he is?  He may have the four S’s, for all I care.  Yet,” she added with a slight touch of coquetry, “he is not bad to look upon, now I recall him.”

“Had he a long moustache and a sad, sweet smile, and a voice so gentle and yet so strong that you felt he ordered you to do things with out saying it?  And did his eye read your thoughts?—­that very thought that you must obey him?”