And now that the harvest is over, my pleasant sojourn in Felicidad should be over, too, if I stand by the intention I had when I stayed for it."

The smile faded from Don Feliciano's lips. "I am sorry," he said simply, "that you should feel it a waste of time-"

I had to smile at that myself. "Is time so very precious, then?" I asked him. "On the contrary, Don Feliciano, I do not remember a month when I have seemed to live more sanely, more happily, and to better advantage than during this one when I have been your guest." "You put it very graciously," my host murmured. "I am greatly obliged to you. And that makes me all the sorrier—”

"I should be sorry, indeed," said I, "if you did not guess how much I owe to you and to Felicidad. I don't mind acknowledging to you that I came here a very idle and useless fellow, with very few attachments to my kind. But here I have formed attachments, and I have felt more perturbed than you can guess at the thought of breaking them." "Why break them then?" he asked me gently.

"My dear sir," I said, "that is what I have to tell you this morning. I am not going to break them. If you all will let me, I am going to stay on in Felicidad indefinitely."

When he had expressed his joy at that by grasping both my hands, I asked him whether he would like to know the reason for my staying. He nodded his assent.

"First of all, then," I said, "you must let me ask you whether the greatest need of every man is not some steady purpose in his life."

I must have been very solemn about it, for even as he told me gravely that he agreed with me and searched my face with his bright old eyes, he smiled very whimsically.

"Then," I said, smiling, too, yet quite in earnest, "Felicidad has done the greatest thing of all for me, for coming here with no purposes at all to steer by, I have one now. I had hardly set my foot here when I had an opportunity to do what I think I may call a useful act. And from it flowed a stream of consequences which gives me further opportunity for usefulness. Don Feliciano," I asked him, "is there any greater privilege or higher usefulness than to have a share in the molding of another's life?"

"It is indeed a privilege," said he. "A privilege so high," said I, "that it verges on a duty, though a pleasant one. Such a thing has become my duty, and I feel that I must stay on in Felicidad till it is done."

"My dear fellow," said Don Feliciano, leaning over to grasp my hands again, "if you could know the pleasure your decision will give to all of us!" He looked at me a moment, and in his eyes there woke most roguish laughter. "You haven't told me what the duty is which holds you," he remarked, "but if you should ask me to define it in one word, my choice of all the words there are would be-Pepita! Am I right?"

I had to laugh myself, his eyes were twinkling so. "Righto!" said I. "But tell me how you guessed?"

It was pleasant to hear Don Feliciano laugh at that. At last he wiped his eyes. "After all, why not?" he said. "You saved her life, and now-"

"Now I'll have a share in molding it."

"Quite right," he said again. "But may I ask if you have told this protege of yours-this-ward?"

"This godchild," I told him firmly. "I've often envied you your pleasant relations with your godchildren."

I really was afraid his laughter would be bad for him that time.

When at last he could speak steadily, he asked me whether I had yet decided into what mold my godchild's life was to be cast. He choked over the word; our eyes met; and we both laughed again.

"That's just the thing I want advice about," I told him. "To tell the truth, at present I am all at sea. I only know this much, that Pepita's future, since she is, or is to be, a woman, really resolves itself into the question of a husband for her. Am I right in thinking that?"

"Why do you ask?" said Don Feliciano a little wonderingly. "Did not God make women the bearers of children?"

"So He did," said I. "But there are people who would accuse us of being blindly masculine for remembering it."

"Such people," said Don Feliciano, "must be very naive. But I am interrupting you."

"I interrupted myself," said I. "Don Feliciano, in the last analysis, it all comes down to the matter of those purple velvet slippers."

I thought he looked more than a trifle blank.

"Magenta-purple slippers," I reminded him. "You remember how strongly I objected to a pair of them once and to a custom of the country which would wed a girl them, even when she had not a magenta-purple mind?

"Now Pepita's mind is sunset purple, royal, mystic, touched with countless opalescent lights and tints and shades. And such a mind, with custom or against it, should wed with-forgive me if I mix my figures—with riding-boots alone. Pepita's husband, when he comes, must be a gentleman and not a dolt. Must, you hear me say. Behold me, Don Feliciano! I say 'must.' Her first reformer has come to Felicidad at last."

A little to my surprise, he seemed to weigh my words, instead of smil

ing at them. "It's not a wholly impossible idea," he said at last, "though of course it will raise a devil of a row among the women. Have you have you seen the-the boots that suit you?"

"Not yet," I told him. "To drop the metaphor, I took occasion while we were sipping that chocolate there to run over in my mind the young gentlemen of Felicidad. I have already become a kind of betrousered dowager, I confess. And in all friendliness, I must say that not one of them seemed to me likely to make just the husband I consider suited to the thorny, fragile, wildrose-of-the-hedges sort of woman my foster-sister-my goddaughter, I mean is going to be. Her husband," said I, musingly, "ought to be a strong but gentle man; tactful and yet masterful-"

Don Feliciano seemed very much amused again.

"-Unobtrusively masterful; serious in purpose, yet not a solemn, mirthless fellow; patient; infinitely kind, but still unchangeable in his beliefs and aims-"

"You paint a paragon of a husband," said Don Feliciano. "Surely you hardly hope to find him in a small place like Felicidad?"

"At least," said I, "I have the hopefulness of the young Senor Don Herbert Pocket."

"'Erbert Pocket?"

"He was a young man," I explained, "who had so strong an assurance that something would turn up eventually that no setback or disappointment could discourage him. But to come to my pointI found it not so easy to come to, after all.

"You wish my assistancce in uncovering this paragon?" Don Feliciano prompted me.

"Oh, no, indeed," said I hurriedly. "No one else, not even you, understands her as I do. But-to remain longer in Felicidad necessitates a

change in my mode of life. I cannot trespass longer on even your boundless hospitality."

"My dear friend," said Don Feliciano, "quite unintentionally, I am sure, you lacerate my feelings. If you could compute the amount of pleasure, the quantities and quantities of it-"

"And as I have no violent desire," I continued firmly, "to camp beside the prau with Pedro and his mates, I wish, if I may, to acquire a roof-tree of my own. By lease, if possible, by purchase if I must, I would become for a while a householder in Happiness,-if my wish is not disagreeable to any one?"

In Don Feliciano's mind, when he realized that this was my unalterable feeling, contrary emotions contended for a while like weights hung at the arms of a balance. But finally, the pleasure of knowing that I was to be a permanent-forwhatever-time - it - might-be fellow citizen overcame the regret that I could not also be his very-welcomefor-as-long-as - I-would-honor - him guest.

The way in which he contrived to reveal the outcome of this involved hedonistic reaction and to let me know that whatever pleased nie gave him more pleasure still was a lesson in conversational dexterity. When at last it was finished I told him that I was glad to find he agreed with me about my duty.

"My Sententiousness," said I, "holds a contrary opinion, as usual. But now we are two to one and a very strong majority, since we are so much the older and wiser two out of the three of us."

"The three of us?" said Don Feliciano. "Your Sententiousness? What is that, please?"

"It's a name I have," said I, controlling my lips with difficulty, as I realized that even to Don Feliciano my poor head seemed hopelessly awry just then, "a name I have for

a sort of embodied spirit that has taken up its residence inside me and spends its time in passing comments on my conduct."

"I see now," said Don Feliciano, visibly relieved. "You mean your conscience."

'Do I?" I asked. "Isn't a science something that tells you afterwards when you've done a thing wrong?"

"Some of them," said Don Feliciano dryly, "would answer to that description.

"I thought so," said I. "I've felt that way once or twice myself. But this thing I'm speaking of is quite different. It looks ahead as well as back. It's a spirit of negation through and through. In one of its incarnations, I fancy, it must have been a butterfly collector of the thorough-going, German type. It's just the sort to ruthlessly enjoy catching every airy, errant, fluttering thing to pin its wings out flat and dry them. It's been busy even as I've been talking with you here. It objects to my remaining in Felicidad, predicting certain complications-"

Don Feliciano had been smiling. All at once he turned grave.

"My dear Don D-jon," he said, rather soberly, "your frankness imposes on me a certain responsibility which I dislike to accept. But being much older than you are, I feel that since you are good enough to attach an interest to my opinions, I ought to remind you of a-not danger so much as possibility-" he hesitated.

"The possibility, in short," said I, smiling, "that after eliminating the unavailable aspirants for Pepita's hand, I may reach the point where I am left-standing in the boots myself?"

"That's one way of putting it," said he. "Though you are no longer a boy, as you have sometimes reminded me, you are not an an

cient man yet. A certain something about you makes me suspect that you might not be wholly unsusceptible to the charms of a woman as attractive as Pepita, if you were thrown much in her company. Are you prepared to run that-risk?"

"At such a suspicion," said I, laughing outright, "I suppose no man of less than ten-score years, Benedict or celibate, ever took deep offense. I will tell you frankly that I have thought of such a possibility. I even went so far, once, as to dream of it. But I woke up! God forbid," I said, "that's ever happening to me. I admire my godchild immensely. As a psychologist, I find her unpredictabilities even fascinating. But in a wife such qualities-why, Dan Feliciano, the girl's a dozen girls. The man who marries her will be worse off than a Mormon,-who at least can lodge his dozen separate. God save me from a girl like that! I have had one experience of her tender mercies, and that was quite enough for me. No, Don Feliciano, if I ever marry, it will be with a woman of one idea, and that a mawkish one that I can pooh-pooh to my heart's content; not with a minx like this godchild of mine."

"And yet," said he, "you seem quite ready to deliver over some man and brother to her mercies."

"Oh, yes, indeed," said I, "quite ready, when the time comes. Meanwhile, I'm eager to get settled here in Happiness.'

"There's no reason," said Don Feliciano, "why we shouldn't go out and find a house for you at once. If I can only find my own hat first-"

He turned to me suddenly. "May I ask," said he, "how long this plan of yours has been maturing in your mind?"

"A good two hours, at the very least," said I. "I'm positive I began

to think of it almost as soon as I woke up."

"I thought so," he said, and smiled at me. "Your future, at present, is quite the most extemporaneous future I ever heard of. But after all," he said, more thoughtfully, "why shouldn't all our futures be extemporaneous? A man's own decent impulses are surely as safe a guide for him as the bloodless wisdom of his neighbor.

"Well," he continued, "I hope we'll find eventually that you've extemporized today a very pleasant future. And now, if I could only find my hat-"

The hat was lying under his nose.

CHAPTER XVII.

House of Forgetfulness.

When Don Feliciano had finally run down his hat, we set out on our larger quest.

It was my first adventure in house-hunting, a chase which, though I had never tried it, I had supposed was not numbered in the list of sports.

But in Felicidad, where all things are transformed, it was sport of a quiet sort. I could not have asked for two more pleasurable days than those I spent in Don Feliciano's company, prowling about the sunny little town.

It is true that the object of our But there were search eluded us. compensations.

To me, at least, there was an interest almost exciting in the hunt itself; in the unhurried and judicial weighing of the merits and demerits of various sites; in the ever-present feeling that I might be at any instant on discovery's verge. One must have been a wanderer, I think, and homeless for many years, as I had been, to find quite that zest in the mere contemplation of a square of sheltering roof and walls, a few feet of earth, which may be destined for one's own.

And if I could not find my house at once I soon discovered that my companion, who seemed to be proprietor of every second or third dwelling in the town, would take great pleasure in turning the occupants out of any one of them that suited me, and that the occupants would share his pleasure if their home fitted at all my needs and my condition. It was made plain to me that in leaving the shelter of Don Feliciano's roof I was not leaving the boundless hospitality which Felicidad extended to the stranger within her gates.

But in my needs and my condition, as determined by Don Feliciano, lay a difficulty. Of his many houses not one was quite what we were looking for. One was too large and one too small; one too dry and one too damp; all were too sunny or too dark; too solitary or too closely elbowed by their neighbors for one who, though by choice a follower of Noah's ancient trade, was yet obviously, as Don Feliciano assured me many times, of a position, with a certain regard for dignity to be maintained.

Especially, no house we inspected promised to accommodate my servants properly. That objection amused me more than all the others.

"You seem to forget," said I, "that I am a man of the very simplest tastes. Pedro and his fellows, if they have not vanished with the prau-"

"They are camping on the beach," said my host. "They are being looked out for, and I beseech you not to worry about them."

"I have not been worrying," said I. "But Pedro and his fellows will be all the retainers I shall have need of. And since the five of us have curled up, comfortably enough, night after night, within the confines of our boat, it seems improbable that we cannot find room for ourselves in almost any house."

"My dear Don Djon," said Don Feliciano, "your establishment is certain to expand. To tell the truth, our chief difficulty lies in your bachelorhood. We've never had a bachelor in Felicidad before, and it's puzzling to find a place where you will be comfortable without being lonely. But I have just remembered-"

Even as he was speaking, I lifted my eyes and looked once, and knew that the search was ended. I had found my house.

We were in that corner of Felicidad which is nearest the sunrise and the sea, where the fringing palmgrove stops, and the beach narrows to a bright spit of sand between the quiet waters of the bight and the steadily rolling current of the river. Before us stretched an untrodden lane, and at the end of it, almost in the shadow of the somber palms, a single house stood in a sunny garden.

It was such a house as I had never thought of finding there. It was built of stone, the same gray stone as the convent, and its roof was of old tiles, dully red. Tht low wall around the garden was of soft gray limestone, too, or coral rock, whichever it may have been.

The house was not large,—just large enough, I thought, to be dignified without losing its air of cosiness. The simple sweep and sureness of its lines made it, in its way, rather imposing.

"There," said I unhesitatingly, "is the house for me."

Don Feliciano glanced in the direction of my pointing finger and then turned away. "My dear Don Djon," he said, "I am sure that we can find a much more desirable place for you than that. Let us go on and try." His tone was urgent.

But I drew him down the lane with me, and at each step I was better pleased. "I am sure," I said again, "that I have found my house