"Sing something," my companion suggested. "It needs music to make the
spell complete."

"It does," I assented, "but you must stay where you are," and climbing
to a balcony at the end of the building, I concealed myself in the
shadow.

He glanced up at the first notes, then sat with bowed head. I filled the
old church with an Ave Maria, then another. As I sang, the candles
seemed to have been lighted on the gilded altars, and the brown friars
and dusky Indians took form in the dim enclosure.

"More," he urged, but I would not, for I feared that the spell might be
broken. So he came up to see why I lingered, and found me mounted on a
ladder peering up at the old mission bells and the hand-hewn rafters
tied with ropes of plaited rawhide.

My song must have attracted a passer-by, for a voice greeted us as we
descended.

"Did you see the bells?" he asked eagerly. "They're a good deal like
some of us old folks, out of commission because of age and disuse, but
nevertheless they have their value. One has lost its tongue, another is
cracked and the third sags against the side wall, so they're useless as
church bells, but still they seem to speak of the days of the padres and
the Indians."

"Were there many Indians here?" questioned the Bostonian.

"Often more than a thousand. I was born in the shadow of this building,