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 driven out some happy day, Cristóbal will come home, if he does not die of a lonely heart in that distant land of strangers."

"There is Padre Mateo, lighting the governor to his room—see—at the window there! Ah! he is closing the shutters, I got only a glimpse of his beard."

"When he goes in the morning to see the mill that Don Juan made you'll get a sight of him, for all the good it will do you. I wouldn't walk the length of the church to see him."

"If you would ask him," Maria spoke eagerly, animated by the sudden thought, "he might give Cristóbal a pardon. Who knows?"

"He'd order the soldiers to flog me," Inez replied, bitter beyond her years under the burden of her sorrow. "There is no pardon for an Indian who lifts his hand against the oppressor of his people. There is Doña Magdalena in her door to see if they are putting out their candles—she is looking at the governor's window. Gertrudis does not want him to see her, she has no faith in his sympathy."

"I hope my little sister will hold her candle straight," said Maria, projecting ahead for a little bit of something to worry over.

"The flame will point to heaven, no matter what way it leans," Inez said.

"There, Doña Magdalena goes in and shuts the door. She is a slow woman about some things—if she is much longer getting Gertrudis ready my little sister will go to sleep. How cold the pave-


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 ment is!" she shuddered, her little brown hand spread on the tiles.

"Not so very cold," Inez denied, trying it with her palm. "It wouldn't be any softer under her bare knees if it was warm."

"The ground is warmer, and softer," said Maria, whose troubles were few and light. "I think I'd walk in the cart-track if I were in dear Gertrudis' place."

"That would be a slight to Our Señora, Maria, trying to win her favor by the easiest way. If you were doing it for someone you held dear you would go over the stones."

"Yes, over sharp stones, or hot ones, or cold ones. I would go where lions waited to tear me, as they went in the days of the martyrs—or I think I'd do it, dear Inez. I never have loved anybody yet, I am not quite sure."

"She is coming!" Inez whispered.

The girls stood, drawing into the shadow with instinctive nicety of regard, to spare Gertrudis the bold evidence, at least, of the curious interest that drew them to the vineyard edge at that late hour.

Gertrudis came alone into Don Geronimo's door, from which no gleam of light fell from within the house. There were two steps from the threshold to the pavement; on the upper one of these Gertrudis paused, her hand on the door-jamb, a bare foot put out in seeming hesitant exploration, as one advances into untried water whose icy chill is feared.

The night was clear, it being that season of the

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 year when clouds have been so long absent from the skies as to be unreckoned in the affairs of men. The stars seemed drawn near to earth, spreading and contracting in their bright scintillation as if they panted at the barrier of space that held them back; Polaris was red close down upon the hills. Even a shred of moon is bright beyond the brightness of other moons in those serene autumn nights of California. This night the cold sphere seemed swollen with a passion of light. Gertrudis stood revealed in the shadow of Don Geronimo's wall.

She was dressed in white, like a bride. Her skirts, turned up above her knees as if she lifted them at a brookside, revealing her gleaming limbs, white as the sun-bleached linen of her spotless garb. She came with sudden resolution down the steps and stood on the pavement, assured by the silence around her, although she could see the Indians grouped along the arcade at the margin of the vineyard. There was something in their attitude of silent, sympathetic waiting that was like a sustaining hand.

Don Geronimo's house stood almost in the center of the arcade, there being something less than a hundred yards between his steps and the great door of the church. Ahead of Gertrudis the shadowy arcade stretched away broken by loops of moonlight; on one hand was the cart-track, white with dust; on the other, a little way ahead, the vineyard. In the courtyard behind her the water of the fountain could be heard plashing as it overflowed the rim of


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 its great mossy bowl, which stood like a goblet among water hyacinths and lilies.

The little candle-bearers appeared suddenly in the door, released with their blazing tapers from the room where Doña Magdalena had held them in readiness. Gertrudis dropped to her knees; the little girls ranged beside her, two a pace or two ahead, two a distance behind. They were dressed in white; their feet were bare. White ribbons were bound around their foreheads and smooth black hair.

Gertrudis remained a little while as she had knelt, her head bowed. Along the edge of the vineyard her humble friends were strewing the rose-leaves of their ardent prayers in the way her knees, bared to this act of devotional appeal, must pass.

A little sigh sounded, a faint, soft gasp, from the breasts of those dark, grave watchers when Gertrudis lifted her face, her head thrown back a little as if she looked into heaven, and began her painful march. Her fair hair was drawn back smoothly, every joyous ripple of it pressed down and bound by the white ribbon that circled her forehead. It was a broad ribbon, worn after the fashion of the Indian girls on fiesta days. In the center of it, just between Gertrudis' eyes, there was a silver star.

Doña Magdalena closed her door without a sound. She came and stood in the center of the arcade like a sentinel, seeming to say that none was to follow the slow little procession, no matter how hard sympathy might urge. Gertrudis passed on, clasped hands pressed to her breast in attitude of appeal, her


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 face white and holy, lifted as if to keep her eyes from calculation of what distance lay between her and the end of that painful journey.

"She sees nothing of this earth!" Inez whispered as she passed.

"She does not shrink, she puts her dear soft knees down as if they fell on cushions. But look! every step—oh, every step!"

The tiles of the pavement were worn down by the stream of feet that ran over them unceasingly. But there were little bits of granite, set into them, sharpangled and enduring; pebbles of harder substance than the red-baked soil. These stood above the worn surfaces, as if they had been sown by the hands of a calculative torturer, to tear this suppliant's tender flesh. With each step the candles of the two little girls who came behind her revealed dark spots on the chafed red tiles.

They were kneeling along the edge of the vineyard as Gertrudis passed, except here and there one whose curiosity was stronger than his piety, who stood among the vines. The murmur of low-breathed prayers rose softly; at least half the village was there, moved to compassion by this spectacle of sacrifice.

Gertrudis wavered only once in this tortuous march. She had passed more than half the distance when it seemed that the pain of her bleeding knees was more than she could bear. She stopped, swaying as if to fall. The two girls who walked ahead of her continued on, unaware of the break in the sup-


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 pliant's slow march. Wrung by an agony that could not remain voiceless, Gertrudis bowed her head and cried, a sharp sob breaking the struggling compression of her brave lips, pressed hard to hold it back.

There was such anguish in the cry, such piteotis appeal, that it echoed from the hearts of those who heard it. The sound of this sympathetic weeping, bursting here and there into an uncontrollable sharp wail, frightened the candle-bearers until it seemed for a moment that they would run away screaming the terror that stared out of their wild little eyes. Gertrudis spoke softly to them, her own suffering submerged in the presence of their fear. The two leaders came back; the little procession moved on.

Doña Magdalena had arranged Gertrudis' dress in a way that it modestly covered her bared limbs when she knelt, and all but trailed over her feet. There were splashes of blood-stains on the white cloth now; on the tiles the dark spots grew broader, with a trail of trickling drops between. Gertrudis passed on resolutely, her face lifted again in the rapt fixity of her appeal. These who had the heart to look at her face as she passed the church corner and drew near the door, said it was beautifully serene. For in the measure of her suffering, founded on the profundity of her faith, she expected to be rewarded at her journey's end.

"The little ones are to stop at the door," said Maria. "The altar lights will guide her the rest of the way."


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 "They are turning back; it is done," Inez whispered.

The two girls rose from their knees. The four little candle-bearers came running, the flames of their tapers streaming, flying from the church door as they might have fled from a tomb. Maria darted away to meet her sister and calm her voiceless fright. Doña Magdalena advanced and spoke gently to the people, who loved her for her merciful intercessions in the past.

"She is in the care of Our Blessed Señora," Doña Magdalena said. "Go home now, good children, and leave her to her prayers."

They went away through the moonlit vineyard, drawing together in little groups of families and friends to talk in low voice of the courageous sweet lady who had walked in the pangs of her own blood to carry her appeal for poor Don Juan to the very gates of heaven.

"If anybody thinks it is not such a great thing to do," said an earnest old man whose face was wrinkled like a dried fig, "let him press his bare elbow with the weight of his body here." He scuffed his sandalled foot on the hard ground, rough with particles of disintegrated granite from the crumbling ledges of the hills.

Doña Magdalena stood a moment at her door, looking toward the church. If a thought impelled her to go to Gertrudis' side, her supreme faith that Our Señora would lift and sustain her seemed to make it almost a sacrilege. She went in, closing the


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 door upon that sorrowful way from which even the moonlight was withdrawing, as if in pity for the dark stains upon the rugged tiles.

In the church Gertrudis lay prostrate before the altar, where she had sunk down when pain dispersed her turmoiled senses. Faith and courage had sustained her to the last step of that dolorous journey. She lay like a white dove brought down by an arrow, her arms reached out in pathetic supplication, her fair hair against the knee-worn tiles. Her white dress glimmered in the pale altar lights, the dark blotches soothed down to shadows that could not offend the eye. Her simple sacrifice was done; the utmost exertion of her devoted heart was expended. O, Calles Dolorosas of this earth! how often there are trails of blood through them of sacrifice and mercy, converging always and forever upon the sanctified altar of love.


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ADRE IGNACIO was up later than usual that night. It was his established habit to retire early to refresh himself against the duties of the day, which began at dawn with his attendance before the altar at the early celebration of mass, and continued unbroken until the last word in the minute chronicle of the day was entered in his books.

This work tonight had been delayed on account of his sitting long at table with the governor; the gentle padre's candle-beam was bright in his north window long after Gertrudis finished her painful walk. Even after he had closed the record book, where all the doings of the mission were set down for the president's information, he sat involved in a web of speculations that kept the desire of sleep from his eyes.

In the chamber adjoining, Governor José Joaquin de Arrillaga lay asleep. It was the first time in his six years as governor of California that he had visited the south. Now he had come on the persistent complaint of the people of the Pueblo de Los Angeles and ranchers of consequence whose lands bordered those of the Mission San Fernando, to hear at first hand the pleas and defense.


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 Governor de Arrillaga was a friend of the missions; he understood fully their importance, the vast spiritual and industrial labors which they sustained to the glory of God and the welfare of man. Padre Ignacio was fully aware of this. Yet the priest was not animated by any great hope that the outcome of this controversy between the mission and the people, whom he looked upon as interlopers, would be decided as he would have it closed. The governor was a diplomatic man, genial, friendly; but so guarded of word that his mind seemed fallow ground, in which the seed of testimony must be sown and brought to fullness before he would deliver his opinion.

Well enough, quite within the practice of justice, Padre Ignacio admitted. Yet the cause of the missions was so evident that no man could deny the justice of it, except those politicians and schemers whose hands burned to lay hold of these vast enterprises and divide their treasures among themselves.

Not only the treasures of hemp lands, and wheat lands; orchards, vineyards, fair gardens; cattle and sheep numbered by the hundreds of thousands on the ranges of the missions between San Diego and Monterey; not only these, but the poor simple wards of the padres, the Indians redeemed by the faithful labors and marvellous patience, zeal and tender love of these men whose reward was not among the things of earth. These defenseless creatures, only a step removed from the most barbarous state that man ever descended into, the greedy ras-


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 cals who pressed closer day by day would tear away from the mission shelter and enslave.

Here lay the broad spread of cultivated lands, the impounded waters of rivers led into them to make them glad and green, developed by foresight and wisdom, and unremitting toil. It was so much easier for the adventurers to reach out and take what other hands had brought to this state of fruitfulness than to expend long years in building plantations out of the raw land; much easier, also, to sit and grow rich from the profit of an enslaved people's labor than to trim their own vineyards and hackle their own hemp.

It was charged, indeed, that the Indians were slaves under the padres, that they suffered abuses and cruelties, and punishments which revolted the hearts of the humanitarians who complained. That was one of the charges which the governor had come to investigate. True, Padre Ignacio owned in the honesty of his unequivocal mind, the Indians must be disciplined at times, as children of parents never so kind and generous must be held within bounds and administered corrections. There was no denying that these measures had been applied with little judgment at times; the present state of things at San Fernando was evidence of that. Yet this was far from the general rule. Even under the harsh authority of Don Geronimo the Indians had been happy at San Fernando. Padre Ignacio sighed. There had been disturbing days, there had been insubordination and rebellion. But it was


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 quiet again. What a serene breathing of peace there was over everything tonight.

The quietude of the night soothed him; the desire of sleep descended on him heavily. He drew the candle forward, leaning to puff the flame. There was no thought in his mind of Gertrudis and the sacrifice she had proposed to make in the simplicity of her deep faith; the sorrowful act of devotion had been carried through so quietly that no murmur of those who witnessed it had reached to his open window, and he had been so deeply occupied with the business which crowded his mind that he had not looked out upon the arcade, or the white gleaming church at its farther end until this moment.

"It is almost as light without as within," he said, his hand held for a moment between the candle and his eyes. "It is the hour of peace."

Padre Ignacio blew out his candle. The moon was shining in at his eastern window, the bars across its face in curious effect. Padre Ignacio sat looking at it in a calm reverie.

"Padre Ignacio! Padre Ignacio!"

The voice was beneath his north window, where the gleam of his candle had shone but a moment before. Sharp, clear, insistent in its clamor, its emphasis of alarm. Padre Ignacio sprang to his feet, to the window.

"Who calls?" he demanded, straining to see directly below him, whence the voice sounded.

"Padre Ignacio! The Angelenos—they are breaking down the dam!"


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 "Who calls?" Padre Ignacio demanded again, bristling with a cold thrill at the wild note of that shrill voice.

"The Angelenos—they are placing a blast of powder in the dam!"

Padre Ignacio heard the swift scuttle of soft-shod feet across the pavement of the court as the messenger who had shouted this disturbing news into his peaceful window ran in the direction of the blacksmith shop. The thickness of the wall at his window sill, the bars outside it, prevented Padre Ignacio seeing who this person was. The earnestness of the shouted warning, the tremulous eagerness of its wild note, seemed to echo yet in the great empty room. Padre Mateo was aroused; he was making a noise at his window.

"Who is bellowing there?" Padre Ignacio heard him demand, the huskiness of sleep in his throat.

"I will hasten to the dam," Padre Ignacio said, putting his head a moment in at Padre Mateo's door as he passed.

"I will be at your heels," Padre Mateo returned, his head already in his gown.

Padre Ignacio did not wait. He ran toward the church, bristling with indignation against this sneaking trespass by the Angelenos, not doubting for a breath that the warning had been an honest one. The high, tremulous, anxious voice still sounded in his ears, like the pain of a thorn in the hand.

"I seemed to know that voice," he muttered as


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 he ran, his long legs cutting the distance like a swallow's wings. "I seemed to know it, but it evades me like an echo." He hurried on, flitting from arch to arch like a swift bird.

He cut through the corner of the vineyard to the vestry door outside which Captain del Valle had fallen. In a moment he was out again, carrying with him the tall black cross borne at the head of processions. It was more than half as high as Padre Ignacio. A figure of Our Señor was carved upon its tree.

Governor de Arrillaga's sleep had been cut by the alarm beneath Padre Ignacio's window; his waking had been as sudden as a fall. Now he was moving about his chamber.

"What is this?" he called, his head thrust out of his door. "What alarm is this under my window, Padre Ignacio?"

"There is an assault on the dam by those rascals of the pueblo," Padre Mateo informed him, coming to his door a little way along the dark passage under the bare rafters. "Padre Ignacio has gone to stop them—I am going. Compose yourself until we return."

"Stay!" the governor commanded. "Guide me to the dam—in a moment I'll be with you—in a moment—where the devil is my sword!"

Padre Mateo, boiling as he was with rage against the skulking rascals who had come to work them this incalculable damage, had no choice but to curb his passion and his feet. He heard the governor


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 let his sword fall with a loud clatter on the tiles, and the muttered curses of the great man as he snatched the various pieces of his apparel. Padre Mateo made ready his candle to light the governor down the stairs.

For an elderly stout man, Governor de Arrillaga was quick about getting into his clothes. Although it seemed long to Padre Mateo's fuming inipatience, it could not have been more than a minute or two until the governor appeared in his boots, his trousers pulled on with rather a stuffy appearance over his nightgown. He was carrying his sword in his hand.

"Now, my good padre, I'm with you," he said. "Lead away—let me get a sight of these precious citizens at their admirable work!"

Padre Ignacio arrived in breathless precipitation at the dam, having run all the way. He burst among the wreckers, who were so intent on their preliminary work of destruction that they had not seen him until he was within two rods of them, holding the cross before him with extended arms like a peace offering or a shield.

"Hold your work here, lawless men!" Padre Ignacio commanded. He pushed among them to the spot where two men, under the direction of no less important person than Comisionado Felix himself, were drilling a hole with a crowbar deep into the adobe-and-bowlder dam.

There were not more than nine or ten men in the crowd; their horses were tied near the mill. The


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 moon was so bright that the features of every man there were laid plainly before Padre Ignacio's searching eyes, and he was not in the least surprised to see the other two members of the committee who had waited on him not long past in company with the comisionado: Sebastian Alvitre, late outlaw of the king's road, now innkeeper at the pueblo; and Manuel Roja, citizen, of no particular calling. The others were unknown to Padre Ignacio, but he made such note of their faces as to be able to identify every one of them when necessary.

The men who were drilling the hole dropped the bar and drew away from the cross as from a firebrand, one of them stumbling blindly against the pail of water they had been pouring into the hole to soften the sun-dried bricks, upsetting it over Sebastian Alvitre's feet. Padre Ignacio saw that several holes had been started and abandoned, due to striking imbedded boulders. This one they had down four feet or more, already below the water line. The priest planted the cross in the mouth of this hole, pushing it down solidly, leaving it standing there in its sacred defiance.

"So I see you here, Vincente Felix," he said sternly, "a man sworn to uphold and enforce the law, setting your hand to this outrageous deed! Sebastian Alvitre, this is the manner in which you repay the mercy of those whose generosity saved your neck from the hangman's rope."

Alvitre had not moved an inch at Padre Ignacio's approach. He stood within arm's reach of the cross,


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 the shadow of his broad hat across his dark face.

"We have not come on a lawless expedition," Comisionado Felix denied. He came forward, Padre Ignacio and his cross between. The others had fallen back, leaving a broad clear space: around the point of their interrupted operations.

"There, Padre Ignacio, there is our reason for coming," said Alvitre, pointing to the spillway. "See that little trickle of water that you spare us from the plenty you have stored up behind this dam. That is our reason for coming here tonight, after our prayers and petitions to you have failed."

"It wastes away before it comes to the pueblo, our gardens have withered, our cattle are dying, our women and children are suffering the pangs of thirst," Comisionado Felix declared. He set himself in dramatic attitude, arms thrown out as if he laid his purpose and its motives bare to all the earth.

"You have come like cowards and dishonest men to take what does not belong to you," Padre Ignacio replied.

"You wrong us, good padre," Alvitre boldly defended. "We have come only to take what is our right. Your oppressions cry out to God!"

"Miserable man! Away with you, now—all of you! Begone from here! If any man puts hand to the destruction of this work again, he"

"I have heard curses, and I have been cursed, padre; they don't hurt a man," Alvitre interrupted. "But I will tell you, Padre Ignacio, we are reasonable men. If you value your water so dearly, maybe


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 you are ready to pay us the damages we have suffered, and keep it where it is. The soldiers have not eaten up all of your gold."

"You discover the honesty of your purpose here, Alvitre," Padre Ignacio returned, contemptuous of this offer to compromise for a price.

"And there is a horse at this mission belonging to me," Alvitre pursued, unshaken, unabashed, bold as he ever was when he took away a man's money on the king's road. "I must include the horse in my terms of settlement. Bring us two thousand dollars in gold, good padre, and my horse, and you will see us ride away from here. With that money we can put down wells; we can endure till the rains come."

The others, some of whom were drawing off at the priest's half-spoken threat of the church's awful displeasure, Manuel Roja, the fat citizen among them, came crowding near again when Alvitre began this proposal of compromise. Comisionado Felix, little better than his second, caught at this offered adjustment with hungry zeal.

"Indemnity, that is all we ask, or it might be said with more truth, aid in finding water somewhere in the ground that we can't find in the river any longer, since the padres at San Fernando shut it up to their own selfish use," Felix said.

"It is plain that your purpose is robbery, if not of one thing, then another," Padre Ignacio replied, more sad than indignant to see such rascality stripped of all pretense. "Poor knaves! you do


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 not understand the enormity of the thing you propose. But you shall take neither water nor gold from San Fernando tonight. It is enough. Go now—away with you!"

"Roja, do you desert us?" Alvitre demanded, roughly challenging the citizen who was starting again toward his horse, followed by three or four.

"I have misunderstood your purpose, and I did not come to fight a priest," Roja replied.

"Go your way, coward! there are enough without you. I am not afraid of a piece of wood, nor any man's curse!" Alvitre snatched the cross, flung it aside and set his foot over the hole. "Bring the powder and fuse! Felix, watch that man!"

Padre Ignacio would bear watching, indeed. Fired by overmastering resentment of this ruffian's contempt of the church's authority, he sprang and picked up the cross. He swung it with all the passion of his heart, all the strength of his sinewy arms, and would have struck Alvitre down in a moment only for the interference of a tall bearded man who leaped and caught his arm from behind. The rascal laughed lightly, as if he had overpowered a defiant boy, twisted the cross out of Padre Ignacio's hands and stood holding him by the wrists.

"Take yourself away from here in peace, padre, before I tie you with your girdle to yonder post and leave you to enjoy the spectacle of the blast that's going to blow your dam to pieces in a minute or two," Alvitre counseled.


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 "You shall blow me to pieces with it, then! I'D not move a foot!"

Alvitre lifted his head from the work of pouring powder into the hole. He looked at Padre Ignacio a moment, his hat pushed back, the moonlight on his face. There was a gleam of his teeth between his parted lips.

"You poor old fool! I believe you'd do it!" he said. "Take him over behind the mill—see to it Felix—where he'll be out of harm, and tie him securely. It will do him good to hear the water rush."

"Come away, padre, come away," Comisionado Felix requested, his voice in a degree respectful, his hand lightly on the priest's shoulder. "We must have our water, you understand. You can see the river is dry, so dry. I tell you good padre, that it is no more than a mule can drink three miles below the dam."

Alvitre had stepped into command of the expedition as naturally as if he had been appointed captain of it instead of Comisionado Felix. Whatever justice there might be behind their complaint of oppression in this matter of shutting off the river, their act was an unlawful one, outrageous as it was cowardly. All these phases of it fitted it peculiarly to Alvitre's hand. He put down the bag of powder with a curse when he saw that Padre Ignacio moved neither at his command nor the comisionado's entreaty.

"We're not going to have a martyr here, old


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 man," he said rudely. "Now, march away before you set me on fire with a passion that jumps up in me quicker and hotter against a priest than any other man. You're not different from other people, you priests; you've got legs under that long gown. Let me see you march on them this moment!"

"Here is somebody coming!" said the man who held Padre Ignacio's arms.

"Nothing but another gown, and that serpent Geronimo Lozano," Alvitre said, contemptuous of their coming. "I'll make a martyr of him, with very great pleasure."

Padre Mateo and the governor were approaching along the dam from the direction of the mill, which stood not more than twenty or thirty yards away. Roja and those who were leaving with him, paused in the shadow of the mill to hear, perhaps, whether some new negotiations would begin, in the result of which they might return and share. Alvitre, indifferent to the arrival of this pair, was tamping down the blast with the smaller end of the bar.

Governor de Arrillaga came ahead, puffing from his run. He laid sudden hand on the man who was holding Padre Ignacio, and flung him aside, sending him sprawling down the bank.

"What do I behold?" he roared. "Citizens of the pueblo in this most despicable design!"

"Comisionado Felix, guardian of the law in the Pueblo de Los Angeles," said Padre Mateo, "and on your other hand, Governor de Arrillaga, one


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 Sebastian Alvitre, who places the powder to wreck our dam. Excellent gentlemen, both!"

"You have arrived in good time to learn the honest character of those who make the outcry of oppression against us, excellency," Padre Ignacio said. He spread his hands, rather ashamed of the sight before the governor's eyes, it seemed. "Yes, I would to God they had gone before you came to see them in their shame."

Comisionado Felix was speechless before the governor, turning his head in anxious calculation first toward his horse, then toward the chief executive at whose mercy he stood. What was passing in his mind was not worth the trouble of stopping to read, for it could have been only subterfuge and plans of excuse and evasion, or perhaps of treachery to those whom he had involved.

Sebastian Alvitre was more collected, for he had been confronted in his villainy many times in his life. He leaned on the bar, his eyes drawn to a scowling point.

"So, it is the governor, heh?" he said.

"Comisionado Felix, I will have my hour with you," the governor said, dismissing him with that. Felix started away, slinking and afraid. The man who had held Padre Ignacio, who was, in fact, nothing more than one of Alvitre's former companions of the road, had scrambled up the bank again. Two others and Alvitre, of the raiders, remained.

"You are Sebastian Alvitre, then?" said the governor, advancing a step, leaning to look sharply


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 at the fellow, "whom I pardoned at the petition of Captain del Valle, on assurance that you were an honest man at the bottom, and one who had rendered service to the state."

"It is I," Alvitre returned, insolent under the governor's severity where an honest man would have been ashamed.

"Your pardon is revoked. Stand! you are under arrest." The governor's sword flashed in the moonlight as he spoke. He presented it at Alvitre's breast. "And I tell you, villain, that you shall hang for this night's work!"

"I'll have something to hang for, then!" Alvitre said. He sprang back, snatched a pistol from his sash, the governor's sword-point pressing him. The cap flashed in the governor's face; Alvitre flung the pistol down with a curse, retreating nimbly before the governor's sword.

"Stand!" the governor commanded; "stand, or you're a dead man!"

Alvitre's foot struck the cross that he had contemptuously wrenched from the place where Padre Ignacio had planted it. He bent as swift as a swallow, laid hold of it, guarding himself against Governor de Arrillaga's lunges with desperate dexterity. A smashing blow sent the sword whirling down the embankment; Alvitre, a cry of rage in his throat, lifted the cross high to strike the governor dead.

A swishing sound, as of the wing of a waterfowl rushing in the panic of flight above the hunter's head; a noise of impact, sudden, sharp, as an apple


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 falling from the bough at night. Sebastian Alvitre caught his breath with a choking sharp gasp, flung out his hands and fell upon his face, the cross beneath his body.

"The Indians!"

The man who had held Padre Ignacio in his insolent strength gave this alarm, plunging down the embankment of the dam as he spoke. His companions followed. While the two priests and the governor bent over the fallen man, the raiders mounted and rode hard toward the hills.

"An arrow!" Padre Ignacio muttered.

"It was heaven-sent, it saved my life!" the governor said.

Padre Mateo was looking toward the willows which fringed the margin of the lake.

"There are two men yonder!" Governor de Arrillaga said, pointing.

"Advance!" Padre Mateo cried, his voice trembling with emotion indescribable, a quick strange gladness that thrilled him to the marrow.

The two men were only a few yards distant; Padre Ignacio ran a little way to meet them, stopped, his hands lifted in astonishment.

"Juan Molinero! Cristóbal! Juan!" he said, amazement making his utterance weak.

Juan leaped forward like a man from his prison door, to fall on his knees at Padre Ignacio's feet. The wondering priest laid his hands in benediction on the young man's head, lifted him gently, saying


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 nothing; turned his face to the moonlight and looked anxiously into his eyes.

"You see!" he said.

"Thank God for his mercy!" Juan returned.

"It is a miracle!" Padre Mateo declared.

"It seems no less," said Juan, his voice hushed in the great flood of his thankfulness.

"When did this come to you, Juan? When were you restored?" Padre Ignacio inquired.

"I heard Cristóbal give the alarm"

"Ah, Cristóbal; it was Cristóbal. I knew, and yet I did not know. And then?"

"I sprang from my bed, Padre Ignacio, forgetting for the moment that I was blind. You know it is the way of a man who has depended on his eyes to tell him things, to think of seeing first. I was alarmed at the thought of the dam, standing there in the dark. Cristóbal called you again; I rushed toward the window, I tore the bandage from my eyes, and I could see!"

"It is a miracle!" Padre Mateo whispered. "Juan Molinero, thank God for the devotion of a pure heart whose pleading and suffering brings back to you this inestimable treasure."

"Gertrudis! What has she done? Where is she? What—what"

"Patience, patience, my son," Padre Ignacio calmed him, hand on his shoulder to stop him as he stood ready to bound away to seek her.

"She is safe," Padre Mateo said.

"Where is she?" Juan demanded, his voice and


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 manner so stern that Padre Mateo drew back a little as if in fear.

"Before the altar. I saw her there as I passed the church door but a little while ago. Calm yourself"

Juan did not wait to hear the pacific words. He leaped past them like a fugitive who fled for life; they could see him running swiftly along the white cart-track that led past the great church door.


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ERTRUDIS revived from the swoon of her suffering, chilled by the cold tiles of the floor. There was a struggle in her consciousness for a little while against the confusion of what seemed a departing dream, followed by a clearing, revealing with sudden remembrance all that had passed. Juan; she had perfected her appeal to heaven for Juan.

She thought of him with a welling tenderness which mounted in a sweep to an intensity that was almost a pain. Where was Juan? What if her poor sacrifice for him had failed! It was a terrifying thought. She would stand rebuked for her unworthiness; some offering more precious than her devotion, her prayers, the pain of her body and its blood, would be required, and she had no more to give.

It seemed that she had failed, indeed, or Juan would have come to comfort her, and lift her head to his bosom and caress away her fears. The thought troubled her; it lashed her with hot surge of anxiety that beat in her temples and burned in her cheeks, to fall again in a breath, like a sudden fire in a handful of grass, leaving her too cold to


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 warm a little hope. Shame had come to overwhelm her and confront her with the appalling insuffictency of the sacrifice which she had held so dear.

Otherwise Juan would have come.

There was no pain in her torn, bruised knees, but a numbness and a cold throbbing, a heaviness as of stone when she tried to lift herself and pray. She sank down again prostrate, her cheek to the rough tiles, hollowed before the altar by the feet of so many burdened ones who had come to kneel and pray. She stretched there, her arms reaching out in piteous appeal, too weak, too spent, too crushed and bruised and sorrowful in the shadow of the dark belief that she had failed, to murmur one more little prayer to cap the golden sheaves of the supplications she had sent before.

It was certain now that she had failed, or Juan would have come.

How long had she lain there? What was the hour? She was so weary, spent and cold! Tears that came on her cheeks were cold tears; warmth had gone out of the world with hope and faith. How could she struggle to her feet and go to Doña Magdalena's house, and to her bed under the window where the sun came in at morning? How could she ever return to face them all: Padre Ignacio—who had not shared her confidence in the sufficiency of this ordeal—Doña Magdalena, and poor Juan. She had been denied. Our Señora had not taken compassion; she had not bent down out of her place in heaven to hear.


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 Juan would have come if this had availed. Juan would have come.

It was a dream, she said; the great sacrifice had not been attempted, she was asleep in her bed, driven by the horrible distractions of a senseless dream. She struggled to defeat it, beating with resentful weakness to break its insane illusion, fighting to rise as one drowning fights to cleave the waters and plunge into the sun, if only to see the world again and confirm his unhappy fate. She fought the smothering specter with all her strength, yet without a twitch of a poor cold finger, a convulsion of a tear-wet lid.

She lay as nerveless as one dead, and sank, and sank, under the pressure of what she resented with her last gleam of thought as a dream.

Juan Molinero did not understand, when he came to her there prostrate in the dim lights of the altar, what this sacrifice for him had been. He saw the pitiful trail of blood across the tiles from the door, the dark stain on her bare feet. He was weak in the shaking of a terrible fear as he fell to his knees beside her, and touched her cheek in the agony of his life's greatest dread.

"Tula! Tula!" he pleaded, bending over her, his voice in her ear.

So it was she broke the trammeling meshes of the dream that was not a dream.

She felt him lift her, and was serene as if an angel had stooped out of heaven to bear her to paradise. Juan stood holding her in his arms, the light


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 of the altar candles on his face. She lifted her hand weakly, like the flutter of a wounded bird that struggles to take wing. He took her hand and guided it, understanding her desire. She touched his eyelids, and stroked his face with her numb cold fingers, wonder growing in her eyes. She smiled, and sighed, and drew close to him, this renascence of faith and thankfulness giving strength to her arms to clasp them about his neck, and cling as if she had plunged upward out of the waters to the glad sunlight of day, to find a rock in the midst of the deep.


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OVERNOR DE ARRILLAGA had faced death before in his day, yet he never had been so shaken by the confrontation as tonight. This adventure had its aspect of commonality; there was no dignity in it. To be slain by a vile bandit with an outraged cross was no fitting end for a governor. It would have been said of him that he fell in a brawl, little more dignified, if not quite as ignoble, as a riot of dirty fellows in the street.

It was enough to cause a man to walk in the silence of reflection, turning over in his mind the somber thoughts that attended this happy deliverance. It was a subject for a philosopher, such as Governor de Arrillaga was in his way, this inscrutable caprice of chance, or fortune, or providence, in snatching a man one way or the other when he stood on the great divide between life and death. The governor had been silent in the contemplation of it as he walked back to the mission beside Padre Ignacio, Padre Mateo and Cristóbal going on ahead.

Juan was standing under the arcade before Don Geronimo's door, whither he had been banished by Doña Magdalena, who had only to whisper a word, indeed, in explanation of the delicate matter of Ger-


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 trudis' wounds, to send him flying into the night. Doña Magdalena had stood before him in awe, afraid to touch him, even to let her garment brush him. It would be a presumptuous sacrilege, she said, for one in sin to lay a hand on him, coming so lately from the holy touch of Our Señora which had restored his sight.

For Gertrudis, agent of this miraculous restoration, as Doña Magdalena declared it to be, the good woman had a reverent regard. There was the balm of healing in the very compassion of her touch. She assured Juan that Gertrudis would be well in the morning, to which confident declaration Gertrudis added the hopeful comfort of her smile. It was a wan, a weak, a weary smile, yet the placid expression of serenity, of humble gratitude. There was no triumph in it, no exultation in a reward struggled for and won.

Padre Mateo was almost equal to Doña Magdalena in his regard for Juan. When he came up with Cristóbal, leading Padre Ignacio and the governor by almost a quarter of a mile, Padre Mateo spdke to Juan in whispers. He inquired of Gertrudis, expressing thanks for the promises of her quick recovery. He suggested that they turn back to meet the governor, who had sent word ahead that he desired to inquire into the part borne by Juan and Cristóbal in the late tragedy.

"It will please him to have some deference shown," he said. "I hastened on to acquaint you with his desire, Juan, but it will be better if we go


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 and meet him. He is a just man, but he is a governor."

They met Padre Ignacio and the governor before the churth. There, in the moonlight that fell white on the bare, hard-trampled ground in front of the door, Governor de Arrillaga stopped to hold his court of inquiry into the adventure of the night. His short, harsh hair was standing on end from the raking of his perplexed fingers during his silent walk at Padre Ignacio's side; his sash was slipped out of place around his rather well-filled body, his wide-topped boots flapped about his legs. The collar of his nightgown was open, his sword-belt hastily buckled, the end of it loose from the guard.

Yet the governor was a man of commanding figure and presence in spite of his disarray. He had sat in high offices for many years; his position in California was virtually that of a king.

"Governor de Arrillaga, this is Juan Molinero, of whom you have heard tonight in our conversation before this disturbing hour," Padre Ignacio said, presenting Juan as formally as if the governor had not seen him at the dam a few minutes past.

"The one who was blind?" said the governor.

"Who now sees through a miracle"

"And this is Cristóbal," Padre Ignacio broke his coadjutor's fervent declaration, his hand on the young Indian's shoulder. "You have heard of him tonight, also."

"So it is," said the governor; "it is very true. Now tell me," he demanded with sudden directness,


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 looking from one to the other of the two young men, "whose arrow was it that struck that villain down?"

Juan stepped forward. He was not an assuring figure, his appearance more in keeping with those who had come in violence than one who had intervened as a friend. The scars of his face were hidden by his thick-growing beard; his hair was in disorder on his forehead, he was dressed in the rough garb that he lately had worn in the shops and mill.

"Is this act to be regarded as a service to be commended, Governor de Arrillaga, or a crime to be condemned?" Juan asked.

"The arrow saved my life," the governor returned, his voice calm, his manner unmoved. "Does a man condemn such a service? Juan Molinero, I would reward the man whose hand despatched that arrow in the measure of his service to me, if it lay within my power. Let him speak without fear."

"It was Cristóbal, excellency."

"Excellency, it was Juan."

The two men spoke together, as if they had rehearsed the declaration many times, so readily do the words of generous abnegation spring from the lips of friends. Each of them stepped forward a little, as if in haste to lodge his information first in the governor's ears, hands put out in earnest appeal for credence of statements so impossibly at variance.


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 "What is this?" the governor demanded, looking curiously from one to the other.

"It will be easy to prove that it is Cristóbal's arrow—his mark is on it," said Juan.

"My arrow, but Juan aimed it," Cristóbal testified with equal earnestness. "Excellency, give him his life—your soldiers hunt him like a panther. You see now what a man he is!"

"I beg this reward for Cristóbal, whose true arrow never fails a friend," Juan entreated. "His life is forfeit for the death of Captain del Valle. Give it to him, I beg you, excellency, in payment for your own."

"I see how it is between you," the governor said, lifting his hand for silence when Padre Mateo would have spoken. "Each would have the reward go to the other one, with the true generosity of a friend. But suppose that I say, with this conflicting testimony before me, that it was neither Cristóbal nor Juan who shot the arrow that saved my life?"

"Our horses stand waiting, excellency; we will ride on our way," said Juan.

The governor took a little turn up and down the open space, fingers raking his upstanding hair, a man in deep perplexity, it was plain. Yet it was as evident, also, that he desired to resolve this matter in a just and equitable way.

"It is strange," he said, muttering as to himself, "that one who was blind, and another who was far distant, should meet in the moment of my peril and


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 do me a service which neither will own. A man would think it disgraceful to save a mere governor's life, the way you fellows put it off on each other. I don't know whether either one of you is deserving, I don't know whether to believe you or not. Still, somebody shot Alvitre; he is lying dead on the dam."

Governor de Arrillaga looked from Juan to Cristóbal, from Padre Mateo to Padre Ignacio, hand in his short harsh hair.

"It is unfortunate that I do not know anything about the integrity of either witness," he said, "or what credence to place in the word of either Cristóbal or Juan. Never mind, Padre Ignacio—I know what is in your generous heart. You cannot see wrong in any of your children. Permit me to sound this matter in my own way."

Padre Ignacio spread his hands in gesture of resignation. He whispered to Padre Mateo; they stood waiting the governor's decision while he paced back and forth across the trampled dooryard of the church.

"Then I shall interpret this mystery this way," the governor said, stopping abruptly before the two young men. "I shall say that both Juan and Cristóbal shot the arrow that saved my life, and both Juan and Cristóbal shall be rewarded as they individually deserve.

"Juan Molinero, your case has been laid before me tonight by your good padres; we have discussed it fully. I cannot see that you are guilty of any


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 crime. The old decree that sets the penalty of death upon foreigners who enter Alta California is oppressive and unjust; it cannot stand between friendly nations. Aside from your service to me this night you have shown yourself a courageous, a worthy and generous man. Your work here at San Fernando, also, has been of incalculable value, not alone to the mission, but to the public. You are free from all charges and harassments from this moment. You may remain in California, with all the privileges of a citizen, or depart to your own country, as you desire. So much, then, for you."

"I thank your excellency," said Juan, standing so very straight that it seemed his back never had owned a superior by bending before any man.

"Cristóbal, your case'is more serious," the governor continued. "You are charged with killing the king's officer, Captain del Valle, of the military forces of Alta California. What is there you can say?"

"Only that I am happy I did not wound him, excellency."

"And why did you return to San Fernando, when you were thought to be far away?"

"I was far away, but my heart was here. I could not go on without knowing what had become of my friend."

"Permit me, Governor de Arrillaga," Padre Mateo requested, not to be silenced any longer.

"Many things have come to our ears concerning Captain del Valle since the day he fell, not least


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 among them absolute proof that he was an ally of Sebastian Alvitre, and shared his plunders of the road. This is conclusive."

"Complaints of the same tenor have reached me," the governor admitted. "You hasten me to my conclusion, Padre Mateo—what is it I would have said? No matter; the man was unworthy, he was an oppressor in his place. Yet that does not justify you, Cristóbal, in your awful deed. A man cannot be convicted without testimony, however, and I am told there were no witnesses to your crime, no eye that saw you direct the arrow against the king's soldier. A man cannot be compelled to testify against himself, I cannot accept your unsupported declaration that you are guilty of this crime. Therefore, you are absolved, you are fully pardoned, you are set free. Except—except such penance as Padre Ignacio shall set for you, which is a thing that I leave to him."

Here the governor, as if overwhelmed by his growing gratitude, the warmth of his nature melting the least clinging hardness of his words, rushed to Cristóbal and embraced him; dashed from Cristóbal to Juan, enfolding him in his arms, drawing the young man's hairy face against his own.

"I had no son until this night, now God has given me two!" he said.

Padre Ignacio and his coadjutor sat on the bench beside the broad door that opened to the wine press and the cellar. The moon had turned the middle


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 of the world, and was filling the courtyard with a light that was like soft music of harps and viols, falling even against the north wall of the white mission, touching the knees of the two priests where they sat. Governor de Arrillaga had gone to his bed; Cristóbal to the village. Juan was pacing like a sentry up and down the arcade before Don Geronimo's door.

"It was a marvel, but not a miracle, Brother Mateo," the elder priest said, as if approaching a conclusion of the discussion that had run between them for an hour or more.

"It is an elusive distinction, for me at least," Padre Mateo returned, shaking his head with the stubbornness of a man unconvinced.

"As I have told you," Padre Ignacio said kindly, patiently, "Juan was not blind, at least according to my belief from the first. His eyes were sensitive to light. I had intended to begin in a little while to introduce him gradually to the day, not certain, but hopeful, that he might see very well again in time. This recovery is beyond my expectation, far beyond, indeed."

"Then it remains a miracle, for all your logic, Padre Ignacio."

"Not so, Brother Mateo; there is no necessity for miracles since our faith is established among all men. Juan leaped up at Cristóbal's cry, shocked by the alarm in the peaceful night. All the force within him desired to see; every nerve bent its energy to the consummation of that desire. So, in a moment


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 his bodily forces accomplished what might have taken months in the ordinary course of healing. The clouds cleared from his eyes, in the same manner that the stress of great excitement, the shock of a sudden sorrow, has been known to strike men blind. It all resolves in a natural and explicable way."

Padre Mateo was silent a little while, yet the course of his thoughts could be traced by the slow, stubborn shaking of his head from time to time.

"Then Gertrudis must be told that all she suffered in anguish of spirit and body, all her pitiful petitioning through the long, sad hours, has been thrown away. It availed nothing; it was an empty sacrifice."

"Such devotion is not thrown away; it is not lost in heaven or earth," Padre Ignacio replied with infinite gentleness.

"You are a physician, and I am not," Padre Mato said; "you have an understanding of the science of optics, of which I am ignorant. But, my dear Padre Ignacio, science and logic, optics and physics and all aside, it is a miracle to them."

He stretched out his hand toward Don Geronimo's house, where Juan was pacing his tireless beat before the door.

"He cannot sleep, exalted as he is by the compassion that has melted his very heart. How is truth best served? By ruthless unveiling, or by tender reservations?"

"Poor child!" Padre Ignacio said; "she has


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 emptied the chalice of her heart for him. And the blessing of it is, he is worthy."

"Then who is to tell her," Padre Mateo asked, turning earnestly to his superior, "that she won nothing, that Cristóbal's shout beneath the window did it all? No, Padre Ignacio, it is still a miracle to me; let it remain a miracle to them."

Padre Ignacio did not reply at once. He sat reclined wearily, his white-fringed head against the plaster wall, his sandalled feet stretched out as if he slept. Presently he raised himself quickly, put his hand on Padre Mateo's where it lay on the bench beside him, in his caressing, assuring, comforting way.

"Yes, it is better so," he said.


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OU'LL never be done laughing at me, Doña Magdalena, because I slept the night of the miracle. I tell you it was the coffee; it put me to sleep like opium. I shouldn't have heard the devil, I tell you, doña, if he'd come hammering at my door that night."

Borromeo Cambon was at his anvil, beating out the parts of one of those plows that turned a furrow like a wave, which Juan Molinero had shown him how to build. He did not take Doña Magdalena's banter with his accustomed good humor, but scowled at her with his dark brows drawn, while he pumped his bellows until it roared like a wintry wind.

"You look as if you'd eat me like a shrimp, Borromeo," she said, pretending to pout in an offended way. "I think it was the brandy instead of the coffee. You are not strong enough to take so much of it at once, poor little man!"

Borromeo slowly took his hand from the bellows shaft, like a deliberate oarsman who feels his craft touch shore, turned to Magdalena with such an expression of injury in his broad face that would have provoked laughter if she had not seen at a


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 glance that her raillery had hurt the simple blacksmith's heart.

"That was four weeks ago, doña; a long time for a joke to stick like a thorn in a man's hand and bite him every time he takes up a tool. It is true, as all the world knows by now, that I slept like an alligator the night the miracle came to Juan, and they killed Alvitre at the dam. But it was: the design of providence that I slept, doña, for if I had roused at Cristóbal's cry and rushed to the dam with my iron bar, there would have been no need of an arrow to save the governor's life. Then where would Juan and Cristóbal have stood today? They would have been hunted men, with no governor's pardon making everything right as it does. Now, that is my last word of this jest, doña. Run away to wash the feet of your great lord, Don Geronimo, and trouble me with your cackle no more."

"I am sorry, Borromeo," she said in sincere contrition, understanding very well that her jest had become a thorn.

"Very well, then. There is no reason in galling a man for a weakness because he's got a broad back. But it is enough; go and feed your hens."

"I am ashamed, Borromeo. You are better than I am, and kinder, too. Forgive me; I will say no more."

"Oh well, if you speak that way it is nothing. It was not said, Doña Magdalena. Now, I must go on with my work."


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 He turned to the bellows again, which had wasted its last breath in a long sigh and stood as flat as a parson's purse. With short quick strokes at first, growing longer and harder as the leather filled and grew toad-like in its distension, Borromeo rekindled his failing fire. He did not glance at Magdalena, who stood close by his elbow, her bright kerchief binding her tidy hair, the firelight of the forge twinkling on her Gipsy earrings.

"Borromeo?" She touched the elbow of the hand that held the bellows shaft. Borromeo was bending over the fire, trimming it around the iron that lay glowing among the coals. He did not turn, nor lift his head, nor answer her by so much as a grunt.

"Borromeo?" softly, coaxingly. "What are you making, Borromeo?"

"It must be a piece of foolishness, when it is made by such a fool," he returned, not yet quite mollified.

"Who has made San Fernando famous for its ironwork, from mission to mission for hundreds of miles? Not a dunce, Borromeo; you know very well I esteem you next to Don Geronimo as the best man in the world."

"Maybe it is a ship, then, to carry me to Mexico," said he.

"You will not tell me; I have lost your confidence because of a silly little jest pushed so far it hurt. But you speak of a ship, Borromeo. There is a ship coming down from Monterey in a few days


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 that will carry Don Geronimo and me away. Perhaps your heart will be kinder toward me when I am gone."

Borromeo turned to her slowly, a look of consternation spreading in his face. He began wiping his hands on his leather apron as if making them clean to lay hold of and detain her.

"You are not leaving San Fernando, then, doña?" he said, gently, regretfully, as if he took the blame for her going, and entreated her to remain.

"In two or three weeks, Borromeo. They will send us word when the ship returns to San Pedro."

"But you do not want to go, your heart is sad already. There is plenty of room in California. Why will you go against your heart?"

"Let us not talk of it today, Borromeo. I must go along to my kitchen, I must see if the girls are making the dinner ready. We're going to have turnips and beef, Borromeo. You will come in?"

"Trust me, doña, when I smell the steam of dinner and hear the bell. So, you are going away?"

"It is arranged, Borromeo."

"Then I will tell you what I am making. It is plow, my wedding gift to Juan."

"It is a magnificent gift, Borromeo, something made by your own hands. Juan will value it above a silver plow, I am sure."

"I feared it would not be in time, there has been so much to do. Juan would have helped me, not knowing it was for him. But it is ready to be


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 assembled now; he shall strike the first furrow with it in the land Gertrudis brings to him. Yes; that is so."

"The wedding is a month or more away yet; there will be plenty of time for your plow. But I shall not be here for their happy day."

"They will miss you, as I will miss you when my day comes, Doña Magdalena."

"Your day? What, Borromeo? have you found a lady?"

"A man wants to stay in California, after all, especially when Juan is to remain," Borromeo shied from the question bashfully.

"So you are to be married! And I wonder who the lady is? I am envious of her good fortune, dear Borromeo."

"Well, she isn't so much of a lady, little Maria"

"Maria? Oh, she is as sweet as the morning!"

"She is half Castilian, anyway, and that is better than a man can expect in this country."

"She is the best girl in the village, such a housekeeper, so quick with the needle."

"She doesn't eat bugs, worms revolt her. A man can have a Christian home with her, doña."

"You will have the finest shirts, Borromeo! Maria is a treasure, you are a fortunate man."

"Yes, Padre Ignacio is going to release me when I am married at Christmas time. Then I am going to the pueblo and start a shop. There will be business for a man who knows his trade, Juan will speak


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 a good word for me among the ranchers, where I am not altogether unknown as it is."

"Your anvil would be silver, your hammers would be gold, if my good wishes could give them to you," Magdalena said. "Now, I must go—there is Juan home from his building on the ranch, waiting at the fountain as he always waits at evening for Gertrudis. The evening bell will ring in a little while, Borromeo."

"But, doña, there are tears in your eyes," Borromeo seemed to protest, yet in tender solicitude "It is not our happiness that makes you weep?"

Doña Magdalena shook her head, her lips pressed hard, and went to the door in silence. There she turned, a tremor in her voice when she spoke.

"I am thinking what a desolate place San Fernando will be when all of us are gone," she said.

She went away quickly across the court to her kitchen door. Borromeo followed to the smithy door and looked after her, rubbing one great hand reflectively upon the other.

"Now, that is so," said he.

Borromeo stood in his door, looking over the evening peace of San Fernando. Gertrudis had dismissed her class of girls, who spread over the court in sudden enlivening of laughter and shrill words, flitting like little fish in the shallows, running and screaming in impromptu games. Juan stood near the fountain, where the shadow of the lemon trees fell before the low-sinking sun. He exchanged friendly signals with Borromeo; Gertrudis came


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 from the door of her classroom to join him. They sat on the bench against the rose trellis, the fallen petals like a thin strewing of a first snow at their feet.

"There is plenty to talk about when a man is going to be married," said Borromeo to himself.

It appeared so, beyond a doubt. Borromeo watched them a little while, measured the distance between the sun and the hilltops, which was not more than the breadth of his thick, broad hand, and went in to gather up his tools after his workmanly rule.

There was the building of the new home to be' talked of between Gertrudis and Juan, the adobe bricks for which Padre Ignacio had given them; and the invaluable coöperation of Cristóbal, who superintended the transportation of the same. There was the branch of a grey old roble, which overhung a corner of the new house, to be considered, and pleaded for by Gertrudis, who would alter the plans rather than sacrifice it; and there was talk of the sheepfold, how far it should be from the house; and the garden, into which water must be led from the dam across the brook. In short, there was life, and youth, and hope, and confidence; and all the beginning of this vast, new, marvellous undertaking, the establishment of a family, the keystone of man's felicity.

Juan's face was older and graver for the scars his burns had left; not deep nor disfiguring, such as a man wears a beard to conceal, but more as if sorrow


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 had touched his cheeks with searing hands, fixing a cast of sadness upon him which gaiety could not again beguile away. He had trimmed his beard on his cheeks again in the Spanish mode, and his face was browned by sun and wind almost to the color of Padre Ignacio's. There was not a shadow in his clear blue eyes.

Gertrudis carried her little scissors around her neck as before; they were bright against her white dress, lending her an air of domesticity that became her well. The happy termination of her recent sorrow had given her a new vivacity, a poise of maturity and confidence. She faced the future with a smile.

"Governor de Arrillaga was here at midday, Juan, returning from San Diego," she said. "He asked to be remembered."

"As if I could ever forget him! Did he say anything about his decision in the controversy between the padres and the ranchers over the grazing lands?"

"They discussed it quite openly, Don Geronimo says. The governor holds their complaints without foundation. There is room enough," he said, "for them all without grudging the padres grazing grounds for their sheep."

"He is a just man, his decision was foreseen. And the people of the pueblo? did he speak of them?"

"There is more ground for complaint in their case," he said. It is to be arranged in some way, I


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 do not know how, to give them more water. Padre Ignacio will tell you. He is downcast over it; he says the mission fields and vineyards must be reduced."

"That is bad news. Still, Padre Mateo, at least, expected it. It is the first little advantage of the citizens over the padres, such as Don Geronimo has spoken of gloomily many times here lately as the beginning of the end. The politicians will have their desire with the mission properties before many years have passed over us, Tula. It will be a sad day."

"I used to hear much talk of it before we left Mexico, Juan. There were many who believed the missions were becoming too dominant in Alta California, that they should be curbed in the interest of the pueblos. The viceroy has that belief."

"Interference will be disastrous. Certainly, everybody can't think of the padres as I do, owing them so much, but it would be a terrible blunder for the state to take over the mission properties, as many are clamoring for it to be done, and turn them into the hands of greedy and incompetent political favorites."

"You will be an influential citizen here, Juan; you can work to defeat this unworthy scheme."

"Well, we must not stand under the shadow of a future event that probably is far away," Juan said cheerfully.

"Padre Ignacio says the fountains must be shut off," she said, sadly, "if the pueblo is to be given


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 more water. Will our roses die then, Juan?"

"No, they shall never die," he declared. "We'll take some slips from them and plant them at our home—maybe Padre Ignacio will give us one of the roots of these very plants."

Gertrudis reached and drew a trailing spray to her, and pressed the blossoms against her cheek.

"Dear roses!" she said.

"So much must perish here when the water is cut off," said Juan, looking around the court, bordered by orange and lemon trees, with apricot and peach standing tall among them.

"Dear trees of San Fernando!" she sighed.

Then talk of the building again, which was more pleasant than the thought of withering, stricken roses and the pathos of dying trees. Youth is happiest when it is building, and planning building that may never take form beneath its hands. Building is the quickening leaven, it is the very essence of life. There are old men who believe that as long as they can build they will not die.

"We must get ready for dinner," she said at last.

"Yes, there's the sun's last arrow on the hill yonder."

She touched his hand, turning her face to him quickly, in a strange expression of questioning, of hesitant waiting.

"Juan?"

"Tula." He expressed readiness, eagerness, to meet her unspoken desire.


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 "The governor was discussing today the mystery of the arrow that night at the dam. When you spoke the word just now it sprang into my thought."

"Yes?" said he, pressing her hand between both his own.

"Yes. He said he would give a great deal to know who it was, to whom he really owes the obligation for his life."

"He is a generous man," said Juan. He seemed to have withdrawn some part of him, to have hidden away within himself, and to be far distant from her in a moment. Although her hand was clasped in his, she seemed groping for him, reaching and straining, unable to touch more than his shadow.

"I have wondered, too," she confessed, looking frankly into his eyes, a little color rising in her face on owning to the curiosity which was her right by heritage, if by no other justification. "You will tell me, Juan? Who was it shot the arrow that saved the governor's life that night?"

Juan seemed to go farther away, the elusive personality that had drawn near for a moment while she framed her question, leaped to its concealment again.

"It is strange for you to ask me that," he said.

"No, not strange. It was such a great service, a thing so heroic to tell one's children. Was it Cristóbal, Juan, or was it you?"


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 Juan looked into her pleading eyes, satisfying himself that something more than curiosity, that pride of which she had spoken, had prompted the unexpected opening of a question he had thought closed forever. He turned his face away, giving her no answer, leaving her trembling in the fear of his displeasure, which seemed so plainly expressed.

The last of the little girls were whirling in a ring beyond them in the court, chanting some childish game; Borromeo was in his door, letting down his sleeves, his face bright from the strong mission soap, making ready to close his shop for the day; Padre Ignacio was hurrying along the arcade toward the church, his head bent, his manner rapt as if he walked in a dream.

The evening bell, sounding in measured stroke: One; two; three. At the first note the little girls' hands broke the circle of their whirling dance, the little heads bowed, the little hands fluttered on bosoms, the devout lips moved in the quick words of earnest prayer; at the first stroke Borromeo bent his head, one sleeve up on his bare arm, and Padre Ignacio stopped suddenly, standing as still as the statue of St. Francis in his brown gown at the altar side. Gertrudis and Juan rose quickly to their feet, their handclasp broken, their heads bowed in prayer.

A moment so. And then the bell, quick, joyous; exulting, it seemed, in the call to weary men in the far fields that their day's work was done. The little girls ran laughing off down the arcade behind


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 Padre Ignacio; Borromeo slipped down his sleeve and closed his doors, the bell calling, calling, its tone now rising, now sinking, its joy unabated, its sweet melody repeating against the rocky hills.


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text: The Valley of Adventure

title: The Valley of Adventure


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 1

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 1


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 2

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 2


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 3

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 3


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 4

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 4


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 5

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 5


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 6

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 6


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 7

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 7


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 8

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 8


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 9

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 9


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 believes that it exists as a habitation for the good of the human race. As God began the creation of such good among men and laid down laws for their enjoyment of it, who can reasonably think of its termination? Such an idea would be limiting the activity of infinite love. But the Divine Word, which contains the law for the cultivation of this good, is not to pass away; and, therefore, it is evident that the people for whose use it is designed must remain.

Every one who will carefully consider that heaven is the residence of the Infinite, must at once see that its immensity is such that it cannot be filled to eternity. Who can think of it as a place of limited dimensions? Who can believe that its doors must be closed, and the human race be discontinued, either for the want of love, or the want of room" But if there be both room and love, doubtless the Divine Being will provide inhabitants on whom to bestow them. The room in heaven, however, is like that of the human mind, the more that enters into it the more extensive it becomes. Hence it never can be filled, because the good by which men obtain admission is infinite in its origin and unbounded in its operations, and therefore the creation of subjects for its reception can never cease.

Besides, the perfection and happiness of that kingdom are promoted by numerical increase. A human mind, which is principled in goodness, retains that goodness when its possessor enters into heaven: it is not only the means for procuring access, but it is necessary for maintaining in that kingdom a permanent abode. Every one who enters carries with him some specific form of goodness; this constitutes his individuality, and, therefore, it is a form of good, and consequently a means for happiness which did not before exist. "One star differeth from another star in glory," and every one contributes something by which to increase the general


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 10

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 10


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 11

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 11


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 12

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 12


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 13

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 13


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 14

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 14


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 15

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 15


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 16

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 16


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 17

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 17


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 18

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 18


text:
The Ballad of the Elder Son

A SON of Elder Sons I am,
 * Whose boyhood days were cramped and scant,

Through ages of domestic sham
 * And family lies and family cant.

Come, elder brothers mine, and bring
 * Dull loads of care that you have won,

And gather round me while I sing
 * The ballad of the Elder Son.

'Twas Christ who spake in parables—
 * To picture man was his intent;

A simple tale He simply tells,
 * And He Himself makes no comment.

A morbid sympathy is felt
 * For prodigals—the selfish ones—

The crooked world has ever dealt
 * Unjustly by the Elder Sons.

The Elder Son on barren soil,
 * Where life is crude and lands are new,

Must share the father's hardest toil,
 * And share the father's troubles too.

With no child-thoughts to meet his own
 * His childhood is a lonely one:

The youth his father might have known
 * Is seldom for the Eldest Son.

But let me to the parable
 * With eyes on facts but fancy free;

And don't belie me if I tell
 * The story as it seems to me—

For, mind, I do not mean to sneer
 * (I was religious when a child),

I wouldn't be surprised to hear
 * That God himself had sometimes smiled.

A certain squatter had two sons
 * Up Canaan way some years ago.

The graft was hard on those old runs,
 * And it was hot and life was slow.

The younger brother coolly claimed
 * The portion that he hadn't earned,

And sought the 'life' for which untamed
 * And high young spirits always yearned.

A year or so he knocked about,
 * And spent his cheques on girls and wine,

And, getting stony in the drought,
 * He took a job at herding swine,

And though he is a hog that swigs
 * And fools with girls till all is blue—

'Twas rather rough to shepherd pigs
 * And have to eat their tucker too.

When he came to himself he said
 * (I take my Bible from the shelf):

"There's nothing like a feed of husks
 * To bring a young man to himself.

And when you're done with wine and girls—
 * Right here a moral seems to shine—

And are hard up, you'll find no pearls
 * Are cast by friends before your swine."

When he came to himself, he said—
 * He reckoned pretty shrewdly, too—

"The rousers at my father's shed
 * Have got more grub than they can chew;

I've been a fool, but such is fate—
 * I guess I'll talk the guv'nor round:

I've acted cronk—I'll tell him straight
 * (He's had his time too, I'll be bound).

"I'll tell him straight I've had my fling,
 * I'll tell him I've been on the beer,

But put me on at anything,
 * I'll graft with any bounder here."

He rolled his swag and struck for home
 * (He was by this time pretty slim),

And, when the old man saw him come—
 * Well, you know how he welcomed him.

They've brought the best robe in the house,
 * The ring, and killed the fatted calf,

And now they hold a grand carouse,
 * And eat and drink and dance and laugh:

And from the field the Elder Son,
 * Whose character is not admired

Comes plodding home when work is done,
 * And very hot and very tired.

He asked the meaning of the sound
 * Of such unwonted revelry,

They said his brother had been "found"
 * (He'd found himself it seemed to me);

'Twas natural in the Elder Son
 * To take the thing a little hard

And brood on what was past and done
 * While standing outside in the yard.

Now he was hungry and knocked out
 * And would, if they had let him be,

Have rested and cooled down, no doubt,
 * And hugged his brother after tea,

And welcomed him and hugged his dad
 * And filled the wine cup to the brim—

But, just when he was feeling bad
 * The old man came and tackled him.

He well might say with bitter tears
 * While music swelled and flowed the wine,

"Lo, I have served thee many years
 * Nor caused thee one grey hair of thine,

Whate'er thou bad'st me do I did
 * And for my brother made amends;

Thou never gavest me a kid
 * That I might make merry with my friends."

(He was no honest clod and glum
 * Who could not trespass, sing nor dance—

He could be merry with a chum,
 * It seemed, if he had half a chance;

Perhaps, if further light we seek,
 * He knew—and herein lay the sting—

His brother would clear out next week
 * And promptly pawn the robe and ring).

The father said, "The wandering one,
 * The lost is found, this son of mine,

But thou art always with me, son—
 * Thou knowest all I have is thine."

(It seemed the best robe and the ring,
 * The love and fatted calf were not;

But this was just a little thing
 * The old man in his joy forgot.)

The father's blindness in the house,
 * The mother's "fond and foolish way"

Have caused no end of ancient rows
 * Right back to Cain and Abel's day.

The world will blame the eldest born—
 * But—well, when all is said and done,

No coat has ever yet been worn
 * That had no colour more than one.

"And all I have"—the paltry bribe
 * That he might slave contented yet,

While envied by his selfish tribe
 * The birthright he might never get—

The worked-out farm and endless graft,
 * The mortgaged home, the barren run—

The heavy, hopeless overdraft—
 * The portion of the Elder Son.

He keeps his parents when they're old,
 * He keeps a sister in distress,

His wife must work and care for them
 * And bear with all their pettishness.

The mother's moan is ever heard,
 * And, whining for the worthless one,

She seldom has a kindly word
 * To say about her Eldest Son.

'Tis he, in spite of sneer and jibe,
 * Who stands the friend when others fail:

He bears the burdens of his tribe
 * And keeps his brother out of jail.

He lends the quid and pays the fine,
 * And for the family pride he smarts—

For reasons I cannot divine
 * They hate him in their heart of hearts.

A satire on this world of sin—
 * Where parents seldom understand—

That night the angels gathered in
 * The firstborn of that ancient land.

Perhaps they thought, in those old camps,
 * While suffering for the blow that fell,

They might have better spared the scamps
 * And Josephs that they loved so well.

Sometimes the Eldest takes the track
 * When things at home have got too bad—

He comes not crawling, canting back
 * To seek the blind side of his dad.

He always finds a knife and fork
 * And meat between on which to dine,

And, though he sometimes deals in pork,
 * You'll never catch him herding swine.

The happy home, the overdraft,
 * His birthright and his prospects gay,

And likewise his share of the graft,
 * He leaves the rest to grab. And they—

Who'd always do the thing by halves,
 * If anything for him was done—

Would kill a score of fatted calves
 * To welcome home the Elder Son.

title: The Ballad of the Elder Son


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112 but when I conversed with him he was evidently dissatisfied with this allowance, and of his own accord spoke of resigning his place. His pupil began to study Arabic about thirteen years of age, and will probably continue the study till he is twenty. His Arabic studies were preceded by a course of Persian reading, and the works by which he was introduced to a knowledge of Arabic were also written in Persian. He began with the Mizan on prosody, Munshaib on etymology, Tasrif on inflection, Zubda on permutations, and Hidayat-us-Sarf on etymology including derivation—all different branches of Arabic grammar and written in Persian prose. These were followed by the Miat Amil, containing an exposition of a hundred rules of syntax and translated from the original Arabic prose into Persian verse; Jummal, treating of the varieties and construction of sentences, and written in Arabic prose; Titimma in Arabic, containing definitions of grammatical terms and additional rules of syntax; Sharh-i-Miat Amil, a commentary on the Miat Amil; and Hidayat-un-Nahv a comprehensive treatise on Arabic syntax. It was intended that he should afterwards read the Kafia, a still more comprehensive and difficult treatise on syntax; Sharh-i-Molla, a commentary on the Kafia by Molla Jami; Tahzib and Sharh-i-Tahzib, text-book and commentary on logic; Sharh-i-Vikaia, a commentary on a treatise of law and religion; and Fariz-i-Sharifi, a treatise on the Mahomedan law of inheritance. It thus appears that the student’s attention is almost exclusively occupied during a long and laborious course of study in acquiring a familiarity with language, its forms and combinations, until towards the close when logic, law, and religion are superficially taught.

The only public institution of Mahomedan learning, of which I can find any trace in this district, is situated at Kusbeh Bagha, in the thana of Bilmariya. The tables appended to this report have been limited to institutions situated in thana Nattore, and they consequently contain no reference to it; but the following details will not be out of place under this head.

The madrasa at Kusbeh Bagha is an endowed institution of long standing. The property appears to have originally consisted of two portions, which are stated to have been bestowed by two separate royal grants (sanads). One of the grants was said to be in the office of the Collector of the district and another is in the possession of the incumbent and was shown to me. On subsequently examining the document in the Collector’s Office, I found it to be merely a copy of the original which I saw at Kusbeh. The latter bears what the owner believes to be the autograph of the Emperor, but what is more probable the complexly ornamented impression of his Majesty’s seal. The foldings of the document are so much worn that several portions are illegible, and amongst others the place where the year of the Hijri is given; but another date quite legible is the nineteenth


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 19

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 19


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 20

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 20


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 21

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 21


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 22

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 22


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 23

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 23


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 24

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 24


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 25

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 25


text: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 26

title: The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 26


text: Talk:The Ballad of the Elder Son

title: Talk:The Ballad of the Elder Son


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114 postfix. There are two such families, having two brothers for their respective heads. They are at enmity with each other, and their quarrel has led to outrage and murder amongst their dependants by which they have been disgraced; but their descent and position still procure for them great respect from the Musalman population, although not equal to that which their fathers enjoyed. The second purpose is the maintenance of public worship which is conducted daily at the stated hours of prayer, and attended by the leading persons belonging to the establishment in an ancient-looking but substantial mosque built from the revenues of the estate. The third purpose is the entertainment of fakirs or religious mendicants of the Mahomedan faith, several of whom, when I visited the institution, were lying about very filthy and some sick. The fourth purpose is the support of the madrasa, of which I have now to speak in detail.

In the madrasa both Persian and Arabic are taught. I have before considered Persian as a branch of elementary instruction; but as it professedly does not here terminate in itself, but is regarded as an introduction to Arabic, it must, in the present instance, be viewed as a branch of a learned education.

The name of the Persian teacher is Nissar Ali. He is about 60 years of age, and receives eight rupees per month, besides lodging, food, washing, and other personal expenses, together with presents at the principal Mahomedan festivals. He receives every thing in short of daily use and consumption except clothes which he provides for himself. The Persian scholars are 48, of whom 12 belong to the village of Kusbeh Bagha, and 36 to other villages, 12 of the latter having been absent at the time of my visit. All the pupils of both descriptions, besides instruction, receive lodging, clothing, food, washing, oil, and stationery, including what is necessary for copying manuscripts to be used as text-books. The Persian course of study, commencing with Alif Be, proceeds to the formal reading of the Koran and thence to the Pandnameh, Amadnameh, Gulistan, Bostan, Joseph and Zuleikha, Jami-ul-Kawanin, Insha Yar Mahomed, Secandarnameh, Bahar Danish, Abulfazl, &c.

The name of the Arabic teacher is Abdul Azim. He was absent at the time of my visit. He was stated to be about 50 years of age, and he receives 40 Rupees a month with the same perquisites enjoyed by the Persian teacher. The number of Arabic students is seven, of whom two belong to the village of Kusbeh Bagha and five to other villages. Of the five, three were declared to be absent, and thus four students of Arabic should have been produced, but only two made their appearance. They have the same allowances and accommodations as the Persian scholars. The course of Arabic study includes the Mizam, Munshaib, Tasrif, Sarf Mir, Miat Amil, and Sharh-i-Miat Amil; and beyond this last-mentioned work no student had advanced.


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 happiness and light. The state of heaven is like that of the human mind when in an orderly condition, and as the perfection of the mind is increased by successive receptions of intelligence and wisdom, so the felicities of heaven are augmented by continued accessions to the number of its inhabitants. Thus, to be admitted into heaven is not simply to receive a blessing, it is also to carry into it some graces which we have been enabled to cultivate and love; its felicities arise out of the mutual and reciprocal action of purity and virtue. The Lord tells us that there is joy in heaven over the sinner who repents; the reason is because when a man is repenting, good is being implanted; that good is from heaven; it brings the individual who receives it nearer to the Lord's kingdom, and it provides occasion for a joy that did not previously exist. Heaven, in the abstract, is wisdom and virtue with all their uses; in the concrete it is those excellences implanted in the human soul. These things, in their essence and their origin, are the Lord's, and are, therefore, infinite; but they are capable of indefinite modifications and development in the finite recipient: each one receives them differently, and they become a peculiarity in the individual; consequently, every additional variety must contribute something to the perfection of the whole. A society whose only object is to do good, must, by every addition to its numbers, have its power to do good increased, and thereby the enlargement of its excellence and happiness will be promoted. Now the inhabitants of heaven are such a society, and this in a pre-eminent degree; therefore, every one who is added to their number will carry with him something by which to increase the happiness of all. Can anything which is capable of promoting such a purpose have a termination? or can any conceivable means be considered


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 too great for its accomplishment? Here, then, we reach a great principle, which demands for its realization the perpetuity of the human race; without this, a time must arrive in which one of the means for increasing the felicities of heaven will be taken away, and the number of its inhabitants will have reached a limit; but neither of these results is compatible with the infinite nature of the Divine love. The design for which the world was created was that men should live upon it. The preservation of the means involves the perpetuation of the end. The earth is to remain for ever, just because it is the Divine intention that it should be for ever a residence for men, in order that, from the good among them, provision may be made for increasing the inhabitants of heaven, the immensity of which is such that it will admit of accessions throughout eternity.

Every Divine work has respect to infinity and eternity. The reason why there is such an immense variety in all and everything of creation is, because they derive their origin from the Divine principles, which are infinite, and, therefore, a sort of image of infinity is everywhere displayed, to the end that all may be viewed by the Supreme Being as His own work; and, also, that they may have respect to Him as the Supreme Cause. This fact may be illustrated by what is known to be the results of seeds, which are susceptible of increase without end. From a grain of wheat may be raised, in the course of a hundred years, a sufficient quantity to cover the surface of the whole earth; and, consequently, the produce of a succeeding year would be enough for twenty earths with similar magnitude. This sufficiently shows that the Divine works contain within them an image of infinity.

But man is the chief of God's works; he is the masterpiece of the Supreme Workman, and the purpose for which


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 he has been created is that he may become an inhabitant of heaven. He, however, cannot enter into that kingdom unless he become a recipient of the principles of goodness and truth; and these, because they are Divine, are perpetually expanding in the human mind, and they will go on for ever increasing in their purity and loveliness. In this we may perceive another image of the Divine infinity and eternity; but heaven itself is this image in a pre-eminent degree. As the Divine residence, it is infinite, and, therefore, it must be adapted for the reception of an indefinite number of inhabitants; and because it is so adapted, it is reasonable to conclude that the purpose will be realized. All the adaptations of God are with a view to special ends; and, doubtless, He has given immensity to heaven in order to provide for the reception and happiness of an immense population. How plain is it that all things of heaven must have respect to what is infinite and eternal, and thus to multiplications without end! This result is consequent upon the fact of heaven being the essential dwelling-place of God. If, then, the human race were to cease, the Divine work would be limited to a certain number, and thus all proof of the Lord's having respect to infinity would be absent.

This earth is inhabited by some hundreds of millions of the human family, and it is well known that many thousands are born into it and are removed from it every day. Births and deaths are momentary occurrences. This evidence of increase and mortality has being going on from the earliest times. Indeed, a whole generation of mankind passes into the spiritual world in somewhat less than fifty years: and surely, from amongst these, during every fifty years, a vast number will find a place in the heavenly kingdom. How immense must be the number thus accumulating.


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142 or the most limited mental cultivation would remove. These superstitions are neither Hindu nor Mahomedan, being equally repudiated by the educated portions of both classes of religionists. They are probably antecedent to both systems of faith and have been handed down from time immemorial as a local and hereditary religion of the cultivators of the soil, who, amid the extraordinary changes which in successive ages and under successive races of conquerors this country has undergone, appear always to have been left in the same degraded and prostrate condition in which they are now found.

Having come into this district not altogether unprepared to appreciate the character of the natives; moving amongst them, conversing with them, endeavouring to ascertain the extent of their knowledge and to sound the depths of their ignorance; inquiring into their feelings and wishes, their hopes and their fears, and frequently reflecting on all that I have witnessed and heard, and all that I have now recorded, I have not been able to avoid speculating on the fittest means of raising and improving their character in such a district as that to which the present Report relates. To develope the views that have occurred to me, and the mode in which I would carry those views into effect, would require more leisure than I can command at this season amid the active duties of local inquiry. I beg, however, to be permitted now to remark that, according to the best judgment I have been able to form, all the existing institutions in the district—even the highest, such as the schools of Hindu learning, and the lowest, such as the Mahomedan schools for the formal reading of the Koran, however remote they are at present from purposes of practical utility, and however unfamiliar to our minds as instruments for the communication of pure and sound knowledge, all without exception present organizations which may be turned to excellent account for the gradual accomplishment of that important purpose; and that so to employ them would be the simplest, the safest, the most popular, the most economical, and the most effectual plan for giving that stimulus to the native mind which it needs on the subject of education, and for eliciting the exertions of the natives themselves for their own improvement without which all other means must be unavailing.


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