him that added burden. Three miles from the mission, the road swung up
a gentle grade between two long rows of ancient and neglected palms.
The dead, withered fronds of a decade still clung to the corrugated
trunks. In the adjoining oaks vast flocks of crows perched and cawed
raucously. This avenue of palms presently debouched onto a little
mesa, oak-studded and covered with lush grass, which gave it a pretty,
parklike effect. In the center of this mesa stood the hacienda of the
Rancho Palomar.

Like all adobe dwellings of its class, it was not now, nor had it ever
been, architecturally beautiful. It was low, with a plain hip-roof
covered with ancient red tiles, many of which were missing. When the
house had first been built, it had been treated to a coat of excellent
plaster over the adobe, and this plaster had never been renewed. With
the attrition of time and the elements, it had worn away in spots,
through which the brown adobe bricks showed, like the bones in a
decaying corpse. The main building faced down the valley; from each
end out, an ell extended to form a patio in the rear, while a
seven-foot adobe wall, topped with short tile, connected with the ell
and formed a parallelogram.

"The old ruin doesn't look very impressive from the front, Kay," her
father explained, as he helped her out of the car, "but that wall hides
an old-fashioned garden that will delight you. A porch runs all round
the inside of the house, and every door opens on the patio. That long
adobe barracks over yonder used to house the help. In the old days, a
small army of peons was maintained here. The small adobe house back
there in the trees houses the majordomo--that old rascal, Pablo."

"He is still here, dad?"