“But are you sure you are not pretending to love me now, as you pretended to think I was the muchacha you had run away with and lost?  Are you sure it is not pity for the deceit you practiced upon me—­upon Don Juan—­upon poor Father Pedro?”

It seemed as if Cranch had tried to answer with a kiss, for the girl drew suddenly away from him with a coquettish fling of the black braids, and whipped her little brown hands behind her.

“Well, look here,” said Cranch, with the same easy, good-natured, practical directness which the priest remembered, and which would have passed for philosophy in a more thoughtful man, “put it squarely, then.  In the first place, it was Don Juan and the alcalde who first suggested you might be the child.”

“But you have said you knew it was Francisco all the time,” interrupted Juanita.

“I did; but when I found the priest would not assist me at first, and admit that the acolyte was a girl, I preferred to let him think I was deceived in giving a fortune to another, and leave it to his own conscience to permit it or frustrate it.  I was right.  I reckon it was pretty hard on the old man, at his time of life, and wrapped up as he was in the girl; but at the moment he came up to the scratch like a man.”

“And to save him you have deceived me?  Thank you, Senor,” said the girl with a mock curtsey.

“I reckon I preferred to have you for a wife than a daughter,” said Cranch, “if that’s what you mean.  When you know me better, Juanita,” he continued, gravely, “you’ll know that I would never have let you believe I sought in you the one if I had not hoped to find in you the other.”

“Bueno!  And when did you have that pretty hope?”

“When I first saw you.”

“And that was—­two weeks ago.”

“A year ago, Juanita.  When Francisco visited you at the rancho.  I followed and saw you.”

Juanita looked at him a moment, and then suddenly darted at him, caught him by the lapels of his coat and shook him like a terrier.

“Are you sure that you did not love that Francisco?  Speak!” (She shook him again.) “Swear that you did not follow her!”

“But—­I did,” said Cranch, laughing and shaking between the clenching of the little hands.

“Judas Iscariot!  Swear you do not love her all this while.”

“But, Juanita!”

“Swear!”

Cranch swore.  Then to Father Pedro’s intense astonishment she drew the American’s face towards her own by the ears and kissed him.

“But you might have loved her, and married a fortune,” said Juanita, after a pause.

“Where would have been my reparation—­my duty?” returned Cranch, with a laugh.

“Reparation enough for her to have had you,” said Juanita, with that rapid disloyalty of one loving woman to another in an emergency.  This provoked another kiss from Cranch, and then Juanita said demurely,—­

“But we are far from the trail.  Let us return, or we shall miss Father Pedro.  Are you sure he will come?”