six interminable years, they seemed to the lovers. Again the packet boat
was sighted on the distant horizon. Luis saw the full white sails sweep
past the fort guarding the entrance; he heard the salute of the guns and
watched the anchor lowered into the water before he made his way slowly
down to the shore. It would be the same answer he had received so many
times, he was, sure, and he dreaded to put the question again. Ten
minutes later he was racing over the sand-dunes to the Presidio, his
face radiant and his hand tightly clasping an official document. It had
come at last--the order from the king! Where was Rafaela? He hurried to
her house and, folding her close in his arms, be whispered that their
long waiting was at an end; that she was his as long as life should
last.

"But, oh, such a little span of happiness was theirs! Only two brief
years, and then the cold hand of death was laid upon the sweet Rafaela."

For a moment my companion did not move. A bird sang in the tree above us
and the wind sent a shower of pink petals over the green mound. Then,
stooping, he picked a white Castilian rose from a tangle of shrubbery
and laid it at the base of the granite shaft. "In memory of the lovely
Rafaela," he said softly; I unpinned a bunch of fragrant violets from my
jacket and placed, them beside his offering, then we silently followed
the shaded path to the white picket gate and were once more on the noisy
thoroughfare.

"A fitting resting place for the first Mexican governor of California,"
he said, glancing back at the heavy façade of the church, "so simple and
dignified. Yet if Luis Argüello had lived in New England, we should have
considered his house of equal importance with his grave and have placed
a bronze tablet on the front, but you Westerners have, so little regard