Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/283

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

it, or to pay you for it soon. Don Geronimo will be my surety."

"I have but the one, and this cloak, with me," Dominguez said, very doubtfully. "A man hesitates——"

"A meal sack, then," Juan said, impatiently.

"That is very well," Dominguez agreed, relieved by the easy bargain. "Here is a big one—now, a little minute and I will make you a shirt and a coat in one."

He cut a slit for the head to pass in the bottom, slits for the arms, and handed it to Juan with a laugh.

"I will not need surety for that," he said, "but when we get to San Fernando I will expect a good one in exchange."

"All will be well with you now, Don Geronimo," Juan assured him, bending cver the mayordomo in his ridiculous smock. It was little wonder that Dominguez had not recognized him; it is a question whether Padre Ignacio himself would have done better at that moment.

"You will sit in the cart. Turn the horse loose to follow if it will," Don Geronimo said.

"I have lost my own horse; this one I shall need for the journey that lies ahead of me."

"You are not going with me to San Fernando?"

"It cannot be, Don Geronimo."

"Ah, I remember!" said Don Geronimo, his words a groan. "But that is the past; it is forgotten."