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drink made of the finest Indian corn meal boiled till it becomes a thin gruel.

      A jug of atole presently appeared with two cups, and the American was permitted to ease the burning sensations of his palate.

      "Thank you," he said gratefully, putting down the cup; "that's very refreshing. Atole is a real good drink, Don Nepomuceno."

      "Oh, yes," said the latter, "it's a good drink enough; but now that coffee has come in so much, it is used more by our handmaidens and the peons. All the well-to-do people here buy coffee, with sugar, now. We will have the coffee in in a minute. Tell them to make haste with the coffee, Juana. Did you never hear," he continued to Stephens, "the song that the musician of San Remo has made about Mr. Coffee and Mr. Atole? It is comic, you must know, very comic. You see Mr. Coffee comes from far, far away off in Tamaulipas, or farther still, to cut out his rival Mr. Atole. And then they meet, and the pair have a conversation, and Mr. Coffee tells poor Mr. Atole that he is doomed. Let me see, how does it go? Oh yes, Mr. Coffee begins, and he says to the other jokingly:

      "'Como te va, amigo Atole?

      Como has pasado tu tiempo;

      Desde lejos hé venido

      Para hacer tu testamento.'

      "'How do you do, Mr. Gruel?

      I fear you are rather unwell;

      I've taken a mighty long journey

      To ring your funeral knell.'

      That's how it goes, Don Estevan. There's a great deal more of it; they go on arguing ever so long. We must get him in some time and make him repeat it all for you."

      "You're most kind, I'm sure," said the American, wondering in himself the while how any human being could be amused by such a rigmarole concerning Messrs. Coffee and Atole. But there was no accounting for tastes; and he had found out that American humour did not seem at all funny to Mexican ears, while his recent experience in blasting the ditch had taught him that the mildest of American jokes might send red Indians on the war-path. A difference in the sense of humour goes down to the very roots of our nature.

      They had finished dinner by this time, and the American, declining a cigarette, filled his pipe, and rising went over to his saddle and extracted from the "cantines" the packet which had come for him by mail. He brought this over to his host and offered it to him.

      "Here, señor," said he, "is a little bag I will beg you to accept. It is from Denver; it contains some seed of alfalfa, that clover I told you about, that grows so splendidly in California and Colorado."

      The Mexican was warm in his thanks as he untied the bag and took a sample in his hand.

      "I told them to send me the best seed," said Stephens. "I think it ought to grow well in this country. You'd better sow it soon in a piece of your ploughed land, and irrigate it when it comes up."

      "Yes, I will," said the Mexican. "I'll have it planted to-morrow in the land I am preparing for corn. Come and see my seed corn; I am not content with this common blue corn of the Indians. I have white corn with big ears that I mean to sow. Come along to the storeroom and look at it."

      He led the way, and as they passed through the door they almost stepped over Manuelita, who was seated on the ground just outside, busy cleaning a large basket of frijoles. Stephens paused idly to look at what she was doing, while her father bustled around, noisily demanding of his sister where the key of the storeroom was. The girl's task struck him as terribly tedious. She took up a small handful of beans at a time and picked out one by one the little bits of stone that had got in when the threshing was done, in the good old style, by the feet of the wild mares on a floor of clay and gravel concrete.

      "That's a long business you're in there," he remarked sympathetically.

      "Yes," she answered, glancing up at him with a shy smile, "it takes time," and she bent her eyes on her hand again so as not to interrupt her work. He caught the beautiful smooth outline of her cheek with the long dark lashes showing distinct against it.

      "You don't mean to say you have to do the lot that way, picking out all those bits of rock one at a time?" he asked.

      "Oh, but yes, of course," she answered. "You would break your teeth if we did not take them out before we cook them."

      "But," he rejoined, his practical mind revolting against waste of labour, "it'll take you a good hour to do that lot the way you're doing it, and you could do it better in three minutes." His tone was oracular.

      "I don't think it's possible," she said, "unless you had a witch to do it. There is an old woman, the mother of Pedro, that we get sometimes, but she often leaves some in, and then my father hurts his teeth. The people here call her a witch, but she would take three hours instead of three minutes."

      "Well, I'm no witch," said he, "though the Indians here wanted to play me for one this morning. But you give me a pan – a milk-pan'll do – and I'll show you."

      The pan was brought, and he put in the beans and poured in water enough to set them a-swim. He gave the pan a few deft twirls and shook it from side to side.

      "This is the way we wash gravel to get the gold, señorita," he said, as he set it down. "The rocks are all at the bottom of that pan now, you bet. If you'll kindly give me another pan to put the beans into," he went on, "I'll prove it to you."

      The girl hastened to bring a second pan and put it beside the first, and in doing so their hands touched.

      "You'd better hold it there," said he, "while I shovel them across," and with his hollowed palms he scooped the beans from one to the other. In the pan he had shaken there now remained a little discoloured water, and at the bottom about a teacupful of gravel.

      "There you are," said he triumphantly; "here's your gravel in this one, and there's your frijoles in that one. It's as easy as rolling off a log." She looked agreeably surprised, and he laughed.

      "How would you look," said he, "if those little rocks were nuggets, eh? Coarse gold, heavy gold, eh?" He smiled a strange smile, and a strange light shone in his eyes. "Many a thousand pounds of gravel I've washed, looking for gold in the bottom of every one; but this is the first time I ever panned out beans to get gravel. Maybe some day I'll find that heavy gold yet, but God knows where."

      He straightened himself up to his full height, leaving on the ground the pan over which he had been stooping. His eyes ranged out across the courtyard through the open gateway to distant pine-clad peaks standing out against the intense blue of the sky.

      Manuelita had likewise set down her pan, and was leaning her hand against the side of the doorway and her head against her hand.

      "I hope you will find it," she said, with a glance from the depths of her liquid eyes. His eyes met hers and dwelt there for a moment.

      "Thanks," he said; "your good wishes should bring good luck."

      "I wish they might"; she half sighed as she spoke; "but which of us can ever tell where good fortune comes from?"

      And then broke in the voice of Don Nepomuceno, "Come along and see the seed corn, Don Estevan. I have found the key."

      CHAPTER VIII

      CHILDREN OF THE SUN

      They looked at the seed corn, and the American complimented Don Nepomuceno on his enterprise as an improving farmer.

      "Why don't you take to the business yourself?" said the Mexican, as he relocked the door behind them. "You have money and you have a pair of good mules. You could buy land and work-oxen and hire peons. You would make your living at it easier than at the mining. How long have you been a miner?"

      "Ten years, on and off," answered the other. "It is a good slice out of one's life, I admit"; there was a certain wistfulness in his tone. He was beginning to think that perhaps he had missed a good deal of happiness in his time.

      "Ten years of wandering!" exclaimed the Mexican. "Ay de mi, but you must be tired. Why should you want to go back to Colorado and begin it all over again?"

      "Well, for one thing," answered the other, "I've just heard from an old pard of mine up there,

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