the corner of the Palace of the Governors. And in the rush of strange
sights I forgot them both for a time.




VII

"SANCTUARY"


Our dwelling-place in all generations.--Psalms xc, 1.


They are wonderful to me still--those few brief days that followed.
While Esmond Clarenden was forcing his business transactions to a speedy
climax, he was all the time foreseeing Santa Fé under the United States
Government. He had not come here as a spy, nor a speculator, but as a
commerce-builder, knowing that the same business life would go on when
the war cloud lifted, and that the same men who had made the plains
commerce profitable under the Mexican flag would not be exiled when the
Stars and Stripes should float above the old Palace of the Governors.
Belief in the ethics of his calling and trust in manhood were ever a
large part of his stock in trade, making him dare to go where he chose
to go, and to do what he willed to do.

But no concern for commerce nor extension of national territory
disturbed our young minds in those sunlit days, as Mat and Beverly and I
looked with the big, quick-seeing eyes of youth on this new strange
world at the end of the trail.