Uncle Esmond offered no explanation for this sudden action, and his
sunny face was stern.

Usually wagon-trains were spied out long before they reached the city,
and a rabble attended their entry. To-day we moved along quietly until
the trail became a mere walled lane. On either side one-story adobe huts
sat with their backs to the street. No windows opened to the front, and
only a wooden door or a closed gateway stared in blank unfriendliness at
the passer-by. Little straggling lanes led off aimlessly on either side,
as narrow and silent as the strange terminal of the long trail itself.

I was only a boy, with the heart of a boy and the eyes of a boy. I could
only feel; I could not understand the spell of that hour. But to me
everything was alluring, wrapt as it was in the mystery of a
civilization old here when Plymouth Rock felt the first Pilgrim's foot,
or Pawnee Rock stared at the first bold plainsman of the pale face and
the conquering soul.

I was riding beside Beverly's wagon as we neared the quaint,
centuries-old, adobe church of San Miguel, rising tall and silent above
the low huts about it, its rough walls suggesting a fortress of
strength, while its triple towers might be an outlook for a guardsman.

"Look at that church. Bev, I wonder how old it is," I exclaimed.

"I should say about a thousand years and a day," Beverly declared. "See
that flopsy steeple thing! It looks like building-blocks stacked up
there."

"Maybe this is the sanctuary that priest was talking about," I