Remember the Alamo [27]
settle for in purgatory. And you, too, Iza, are you with the
Americans?"
"Luis Alveda says they are right."
"Oh-h! I see! So Luis is to be my brother too. Is that so,
little dear?"
"Have you room in your heart for him? Or has this Dare Grant
filled it?"
"If I had twenty sisters, I should have room for twenty
brothers, if they were like Dare and Luis. But, indeed, Luis
had his place there before I knew Dare."
"And perhaps you may see him soon; he is with Senor Sam
Houston. Senor Houston was here not a week ago. Will you
think of that? And the mother and uncle of Luis are angry at
him; he will be disinherited, and we shall be very poor, I
think. But there is always my father, who loves Luis."
"Luis will win his own inheritance. I think you will be very
rich."
"And, Juan, if you see Luis, say to him, `Iza thinks of you
continually.'"
At this moment Rachela angrily called her charge--
"Are you totally and forever wicked, disobedient one? Two
hours I have been kept waiting. Very well! The, Sisters are
the only duenna for you; and back to the convent you shall go
to-morrow. The Senora is of my mind, also."
"My father will not permit it. I will go to my father. And
think of this, Rachela: I am no longer to be treated like a
baby." But she kissed Juan `farewell,' and went away without
further dispute.
The handsome room looked strangely lonely and desolate when
the door had closed behind her. Jack rose, and roughly shook
himself, as if by that means he hoped to throw off the
oppression and melancholy that was invading even his light
heart. Hundreds of moths were dashing themselves to death
against the high glass shade that covered the blowing candles
from them. He stood and looked at their hopeless efforts
to reach the flame. He had an unpleasant thought; one of
those thoughts which have the force of a presentiment. He put
it away with annoyance, muttering, "It is time enough to meet
misfortune when it comes."
The sound of a footstep made him stand erect and face the
door.
It was only a sleepy peon with a request that he would go to
his father's study. A different mental atmosphere met him
there. The doctor was walking up and down the room, and Dare
and Antonia sat together at the open window.
"Your father wants to hear about our journey, Jack. Take my
chair and tell him what happened. Antonia and I will walk
within hearing; a roof makes me restless such a night as
this"; for the waning moon had risen, and the cool wind from
the Gulf was shaking a thousand scents from the trees and the
flowering shrubs.
The change was made with the words, and the doctor sat down
beside his son. "I was asking, Jack, how you knew so much
about Texan affairs, and how you came so suddenly to take part
in them?"
"Indeed, father, we could not escape knowing. The Texan fever
was more or less in every young man's blood. One night Dare
had a supper at his rooms, and there were thirty of us
present. A man called Faulkner--a fine fellow from
Nacogdoches--spoke to us. How do you think he spoke, when his
only brother, a lad of twenty, is working in a Mexican mine
loaded with chains?"
"For what?"
"He said one day that `the natural boundaries of the United
States are the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.' He was sent to
the mines for the words. Faulkner's only hope for him is in
the independence of Texas. He had us on fire in five
minutes--all but Sandy McDonald, who loves to argue, and
therefore took the Mexican side."
"What could he say for it?"
"He said it was a very unjustlike thing to make Mexico give
her American settlers in Texas two hundred and twenty-four
millions of acres because she thought a change of government
best for her own interests."
"The Americans settled in Texas under the solemn guarantee of
the constitution of eighteen twenty-four. How many of
them would have built homes under a tyrannical despotism like
that Santa Anna is now forcing upon them?" asked the doctor,
warmly.
"McDonald said,