Many walks, miles in extent, have my Quito and I taken. I say my Quito,
for he is my son, my only son; and beneath the thick shade of laurels,
beside the roadside troughs, we have rested and spoken, he to me of the
unheard, I to him of the unseen.

Come back with me to the days of my youth, those merry days of
California before the gold was about her dear form like prisoner's
chains; before the greed of the States and England had forced us into
the weary drudgery of the earth, and made us the slaves of misbegotten
progress.

We had our church then and dear old Padre Andreas at San Anselmo, and,
my dear friends from the States, we also had cockles from Tomales, which
were eaten with relish on the beach at Sausalito, just where George the
Greek's is now, though then there was only a little hut kept by a man
whom we called Victor--and we had feasts and fasts so well arranged,
that dyspepsia was unknown.

One day when I had been on a long tramp through the woods, gathering
mushrooms, I came home tired and hungry, and found our old housekeeper,
Catalina, smiling complacently, as she sat on the stepping block by the
kitchen door, rolling tamales for supper. "Oh! Master Carlos," she
cried, "we have had much to worry us to-day. Look at those poor, little
ducks all dead and the mother hen also."

"Who killed them, Catalina?" I asked in astonishment, as I saw my pet
brood of ducks and their over careful mother lying dead in the grass.

"I did," she replied, "and it was time that something was done. Madre
Moreno has been busy again. The cows gave bloody milk last Friday, and