luncheon. What with a twenty-mile hike in the sun, he was dry by the
time he arrived, and in his uniform, although somewhat bedraggled, he
looked gay enough to make a hit with my great-grandfather Noriaga, who
invited him to luncheon and begged him to stay a while. Michael Joseph
liked the place; so he stayed. You see, there were thousands of horses
on the ranch and, like all sailors, he had equestrian ambitions."

"Great snakes! It must have been a sizable place."

"It was. The original Mexican grant was twenty leagues square."

"I take it, then, that the estate has dwindled in size."

"Oh, yes, certainly. My great-grandfather Noriaga, Michael Joseph I, and
Michael Joseph II shot craps with it, and bet it on horse-races, and gave
it away for wedding-doweries, and, in general, did their little best to
put the Farrel posterity out in the mesquite with the last of the Mission
Indians."

"How much of this principality have you left?"

"I do not know. When I enlisted, we had a hundred thousand acres of the
finest valley and rolling grazing-land in California and the hacienda
that was built in 1782. But I've been gone two years, and haven't heard
from home for five months."

"Mortgaged?"

"Of course. The Farrels never worked while money could be raised at ten
per cent. Neither did the Noriagas. You might as well attempt to yoke