destroy them.

* * * * *

There was a little, straggling hamlet born of the Mission which the
padres founded among the sand hills beside a great, uneasy stretch of
water which a dreamer might liken to a naughty child that had run away
from its mother, the ocean, through a little gateway which the land
left open by chance and was hiding there among the hills, listening to
the calling of the surf voice by night, out there beyond the gate, and
lying sullen and still when mother ocean sent the fog and the tides
a-seeking; a truant child that played by itself and danced little wave
dances which it had learned of its mother ages agone, and laughed up
at the hills that smiled down upon it.

The padres thought mostly of the savages who lived upon the land, and
strove earnestly to teach them the lessons which, sandal-shod, with
crucifix to point the way, they had marched up from the south to set
before these children of the wild. Also came ships, searching for that
truant ocean-child, the bay, of which men had heard; and so the hamlet
was born of civilization.

Came afterwards noblemen from Spain, with parchments upon which the
king himself had set his seal. Mile upon mile, they chose the land
that pleased them best; and by virtue of the king's word called it
their own. They drove cattle up from the south to feed upon the
hills and in the valleys. They brought beautiful wives and set them
a-queening it over spacious homes which they built of clay and native
wood and furnished with the luxuries they brought with them in the
ships. They reared lovely daughters and strong, hot-blooded sons; and