man was Cranch. The woman! His heart stopped beating. Ah! could it be?
He had never seen her in her proper garb: would she look like that?
Would she be as tall? He thought he bade Jose and Antonio go on slowly
before with Sanchicha, and dismounted, walking slowly between the high
stalks of grain, lest he should disturb them. They evidently did not
hear his approach, but were talking earnestly. It seemed to Father Pedro
that they had taken each other's hands, and as he looked Cranch slipped
his arm round her waist. With only a blind instinct of some dreadful
sacrilege in this act, Father Pedro would have rushed forward, when
the girl's voice struck his ear. He stopped, breathless. It was not
Francisco, but Juanita, the little mestiza.
"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
|