most willing contribution to any cause they ever had made. Helena provided a white satin gown for the foundation of it, two poor women produced cloth for the red stripes, one a scarlet bit of silk, treasured long in the hope of adding to it some fortunate day enough to make a dress; another a red cotton sash that had graced her girlish waist in fiestas long ago. Cecilia herself furnished the blue for the field, silk as delicate as the impalpable curtains that spread in the canyons at eventide.
While Cecilia stitched the star in place, Helena sat in pensive attitude, chin in hand, gazing through the dusty window where Don Felipe's back used to be seen by those who passed. Henderson was talking with the captured artilleryman, who had changed his allegiance with his clothes. The man was pointing toward the pass, doubtless giving information concerning the destination of the cannon. Men were arriving from the fields, where they had dropped scythe, hoe, and plow on hearing the news. There was doubt and fear in the bearing of most of them, eagerness in a few.
Felipe was receiving these arrivals from Don Abrahan's fields, whither they had gone before sunrise to begin their long and burdensome day. A group of them collected around him, listening with turnings of the head as if to watch against some treacherous surprise. Some of them seemed ready to follow the former mayordomo who appeared before them today in open and armed defiance of the authority that he had been the
