"But can you learn that? Where?"

"Anywhere. I have been taking some lessons and earning my two dollars per day besides."

"Oh, Gabriel, why did you do that?" said Lizzie, her face suffused with blushes.

"There! See how you blush because I want to learn an honest trade, and yet see how your people, the Americans, deride us, the Spanish, for being indolent, unwilling to work. For my part, I am willing to prove that I will work at anything that is not absolutely repulsive, to earn a living."

"But how did you come to select that trade?"

"Because to go down town I had to pass by the houses of the railroad millionaires which have been in process of construction. There are two Californians from Santa Barbara, whom I know, working there, and to see them earning their two dollars per day, while I have been losing months in search of more gentlemanly work to do, suggested to me the idea of also earning my two dollars a day while the gentlemanly occupation is being found. Then I thought, too, that I might learn to be an architect, perhaps."

"That is why you have been reading those books on architecture?"

"Yes, and I think I understand a good deal about it already, but I'll combine practice with theory. The thing now is, as Tano is sick, I must go home."

"Yes, let us go. I don't like the idea of your being a mason. Give it up. I think I'd rather see you plowing."

"Yes; in my own land, you mean. Don't be proud. Let me work a little while longer at _my trade_, and we'll go home."

But Lizzie was not willing he should, though she said nothing more about it to him. She wrote to Dona Josefa, saying that if she could spare fifty dollars, to, please, send that sum to her to enable them to come home.

There would be ten days, however, before she could get Dona Josefa's reply. This was not so agreeable, but Lizzie thought she would get ready to start as soon as the money came.

The cause of Victoriano's second severe attack of lameness, of which he spoke in his letter, was again exposure-exposure to cold and dampness.

About the same time that Gabriel was trying to be a mason, and working as a common day laborer at two dollars per day, Victoriano had been pruning trees, fixing fences, repairing irrigating ditches and plowing.

He had only two men to help him, so he worked very hard, in fact, entirely too hard for one so unused to labor. Work broke him down.

"Plowing is too hard work for poor Tano," Dona Josefa said, looking at Victoriano working in a field near the house, while the sad tears ran down her pale cheeks.

"Yes, mamma, it is; and I begged him not to try to plow again, but he insisted on doing so," Mercedes replied.

"What is the matter? Did he fall down?" Dona Josefa exclaimed, alarmed, drawing her chair close to the window.

Mercedes arose from hers, and came to look down the orchard. Yes, there was Victoriano sitting on the ground, and Everett standing by him.

Presently Everett sat down beside him, and an Indian boy, who had also been plowing with another team, came up, leading his horses towards the house.

Dona Josefa thought that they wanted to put the boy at some other work, and that Tano was resting, so she sat quietly waiting to see whether he would walk.

Mercedes now sat by her mother, also to watch Victoriano. She said:

"Mamma, tell Tano not to try plowing, the ground is very damp. He will have that lameness again."

"I have told him, but he says he must work now, since we are so poor, and have only land with a title that no one believes in, and no one will buy. So what is he to do but work? And he has been working very hard all the fall and winter, but I fear he is getting that lameness again. He walks lame already."

They now saw that the Indian boy had run to the house to hitch his horses to Clarence's phaeton and drive to where Tano was sitting.

Assisted by the Indian, Everett put Victoriano in the phaeton, and brought him to the house.

It was as his mother and sister had feared-Victoriano was again unable to walk. With great difficulty, assisted by Everett and the servant boy, he reached his bed.

"Don't write to George or Gabriel that I am sick. Wait until I get better, or worse," said he.

Seeing, however, that there was no change in his condition, he wrote to Gabriel himself, telling him of his second attack. Willingly would Gabriel have taken his little family and started for home, but he did not have money enough to pay their fare, and he owed for their last month's board. So there was nothing to do but to wait and work as a day laborer yet for a while. He knew what he earned in a whole month would scarcely be enough to pay their board, and that to go home he must write his mother to send him money for their fare. But his pride revolted. He hated to do this. He could not bring his mind to it. He hesitated.

About the time that Victoriano was taken sick and Gabriel was trying to be a mason, George and family arrived in Paris on their return from Germany. They would only spend a week or ten days in that city, and then sail for New York.

The day before they were to start, a card was sent to Elvira from the office of the hotel. Elvira took it very indifferently and read the name, but the words she read seemed to be cabalistic, for she started, turned red and then pale.

She handed the card to George, who read aloud, "Clarence Darrell."

"Ask the gentleman to please come up," said George to the servant, and followed him, going to meet Clarence.

The two friends met and clasped each other in a tight embrace; to shake hands seemed to both too cold a way of greeting, when they felt so much pain and joy that to express their sentiments, words were inadequate.

When Clarence came in, he stretched both hands to Elvira, and she, on the impulse of the moment, threw her arms around his neck and sobbed.

Mrs. Mechlin and Caroline were also affected to tears. Clarence brought back to them vividly the happy days at Alamar, when Mr. Mechlin and Don Mariano lived so contentedly in each other's society.

All were so anxious to learn how Clarence came to be in Paris, and where he had been in all these years, and Elvira showered so many questions upon him, that George told him he must remain with them and tell them everything.

The family of Mr. Lawrence Mechlin were also in the same hotel, on their way to New York.

George said to Clarence: "Prepare yourself to be cross-questioned by aunt, for she has been very anxious about you."

Clarence replied he was willing to be questioned, and began his narrative by saying how he came to miss all the letters written to him.

He said:

"When I was delirious and at the point of death in a cabin at the mines, all the letters that came addressed to me the doctor put in a paper bag, and when he left he considered me still too weak to read letters that might cause me excitement, so he took the paper bag and placed it behind a camp looking-glass which hung over a little table beside my bed. I was so impressed with the conviction that I might not be considered fit to marry Miss Mercedes, that when, upon asking if any letters had come for me, and Fred Haverly, thinking that I meant other letters besides those handed to the doctor, answered in the negative. I did not explain that I had not received any at all. I accepted patiently what I considered a natural result of my father's conduct, and said nothing. I went to Mexico, and there a fatality followed my letters again. I missed them twice-once through the mistake of a clerk at my bankers, the second time by a mistake of the Secretary of the Legation, who misunderstood Hubert's request about returning the letters to him. From Mexico I went to South America, crossed to Brazil, and went to England. From England I went to the Mediterranean, and since then I have been on the go, like the restless spirit that I was, believing myself a miserable outcast. It was almost accidentally that I came to Paris. I got a letter from Hubert, and in a postscript he said that he hoped I got my letters at last, for he had sent them with a remittance to my bankers, requesting that my letters should be kept until I called for them. I was far up the Nile when I received his letter, but next morning I started for Paris with a beating heart, I can assure you. Twenty-six letters I found, and I am more grieved than I can express to you to think that I did not get them before."

Clarence arose and paced the floor in great agitation, and his friends were much moved also, for they knew he was thinking that never again, in this world, would he see his noble friend, Don Mariano.

On the following morning the Mechlins, accompanied by Clarence left Paris. Before leaving, Clarence telegraphed to Mercedes:

"I have just received your letters written in '73. I leave for New York to-morrow with the Mechlins, thence for California.

---- _Clarence Darrell._"

Everett, who had been to town, religiously, to see whether there might be a letter from Clarence, or news about him, brought Mercedes the cablegram.

Poor Mercedes, she read the few words many times over before she could realize that they were from Clarence. When she did so, she was seized with a violent trembling, and then completely overcome by emotion. Ah!

yes she would see him again, but where was now her darling papa, who was so fond of Clarence?

Mercedes sent the dispatch for Mrs. Darrell to see, and when Everett brought it back, Carlota made a copy of it to send to Lizzie in a letter next day. The Darrells were truly overjoyed, thrown into a perfect storm of pleasure. The old man said not a word. He went to his lonely room, locked the door, and there, as usual since he lived the life of a half-divorced man, battled with his spirit. This time, however, he allowed tears to flow as he blessed his absent boy, and thanked God that he was coming.

"If I had a decent pair of legs to speak of," said Tano to Everett, "I would dance for sheer joy, but having no legs, I can only use my tongue and repeat how glad I am."

When Gabriel came home in the evening of the day in which Lizzie received the copy of Clarence's telegram, she said to him:

"Darling, don't go to that horrid work again. Clarence is coming, and now he and George will establish the bank."