"
"Which way did Eddy go?"
"To Brown's Mills, scarcely a league away. He will be here--even now--on
the instant. But the senor will come into the refectory and take some
of the old Mission wine from the Catalan grape, planted one hundred and
fifty years ago, until the dear child returns. He will be so happy."
"No! I'm in a hurry. I will go on and meet him." He took off his hat,
mopped his crisp, wet hair with his handkerchief, and in a thick, slow,
impeded voice, more suggestive than the outburst he restrained, said,
"And as long as my son remains here that man, Van Loo, must not pass
this gate, speak to him, or even see him. You hear me? See to it, you
and all the others. See to it, I say, or"--He stopped abruptly, clapped
his hat on the swollen veins of his forehead, turned quickly, passed out
without another word through the archway into the road, and before the
good priest could cross himself or recover from his astonishment the
thud of his horse's hoofs came from the dusty road.
It was ten minutes before his face resumed its usual color. But in that
ten minutes, as if some of the struggle of his rider had passed into
him, his horse was sweating with exhaustion and fear. For in that ten
minutes, in this new imagination with which he was cursed, he had killed
both Van Loo and his son, and burned the refectory over the heads of the
treacherous priests.
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