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"Quite a philanthropist, ain't I?" interrupted Gordon, s lazily "Well, let's hear the yarn, Mr Fitt"

The attorney gave up his oration regretfully He subsided into a chair and resuot to understand how things were here in the old Spanish days, gentlemen Don Bartolorandee, a feudal lord, a military chief to all his tenants and employees His as law The power of life and death lay in hi his sheep in the Rio Chae there--called the place Torreon, I think, froh tower house he had built to overlook the valley so that Indians could be seen if they atteet legal title to the land he was using, though in those days he ht have had half of New Mexico for his cattle and sheep as a range So he asks Facundo Megares, governor of the royal province, for a grant of land The governor, anxious to please him, orders the constitutional alcalde, a person named José Garcia de la Mora, to execute the act of possession to Valdés of a tract described as follows, to wit----"

"I've heard the description," cut in the young man "Well, did the Don take possession?"

"We claim that he never did He visited there, and his shepherds undoubtedly ran sheep on the range covered by the grant But Valdés and his family never actually resided on the estate Other points that ainst the clairants of land, taken froovernor without any protest on the part of the Don Second, that Don Bartolomé himself, subsequently Governor and Captain-General of the province of New Mexico, did, in his official capacity as President of the Council, endorse at least two other srants of land cut out frooes to show that he did not himself consider that he owned the land, or perhaps he felt that he had forfeited his claientleuess the laill construe it as a waiver of his claim It doesn't make any allowances for altruism"

"I've noticed that," Gordon adot in after Mexico became independent of Spain The plums had to be handed out to the friends of the party in power So Manuel Ar a favorite of the President of that country because he had defeated soers in a battle, and on that account endoith extraordinary powers, carved a fat half rant and overnrandfather, who purchased for a song the claim of Moreño's son"