"It is Don Diego Estenega," said one of the girls. "He rarely sings,
but I have heard him before."

"An Estenega!" exclaimed Chonita.

"Yes; of the North, thou knowest. His Excellency thinks there is
no man in the Californias like him,--so bold and so smart. Thou
rememberest the books that were burned by the priests when the
governor was a boy, because he had dared to read them, no? Well, when
Diego Estenega heard of that, he made his father send to Boston and
Mexico for those books and many more, and took them up to his redwood
forests in the north, far away from the priests. And they say he had
read other books before, although such a lad; his father had brought
them from Spain, and never cared much for the priests. And he has been
to Mexico and America and Europe! God of my soul! it is said that he
knows more than his Excellency himself,--that his mind works faster.
Ay! but there was a time when he was wild,--when the mescal burnt
his throat like hornets and the aguardiente was like scorpions in
his brain; but that was long ago, before he was twenty; now he is
thirty-four. He amuses himself sometimes with the girls,--_valgame
Dios!_ he has made hot tears flow,--but I suppose we do not know
enough for him, for he marries none. Ay! but he has a charm."

"Like what does he look? A beautiful caballero, I suppose, with eyes
that melt and a mouth that trembles like a woman in the palsy."

"Ay, no, my Chonita; thou art wrong. He is not beautiful at all. He is
rather haggard, and wears no mustache, and he has the profile of the
great man, fine and aquiline and severe, excepting when he smiles, and