arroyo reaching up from the beach. They looked down upon the smoke of a
manufactory chimney, upon strange heaps of material and curious engines
scattered along the sands, with here and there moving specks of human
figures. In a little bay a schooner swung at her cables.

The vaquero crossed himself in stupefied alarm. "I know not, your
reverence; it is only two years ago, before the rodeo, that I was here
for strayed colts, and I swear by the blessed bones of San Antonio that
it was as I said."

"Ah! it is like these Americanos," responded the muleteer. "I have it
from my brother Diego that he went from San Jose to Pescadero two months
ago, across the plains, with never a hut nor fonda to halt at all the
way. He returned in seven days, and in the midst of the plain there were
three houses and a mill, and many people. And why was it? Ah! Mother of
God! one had picked up in the creek where he drank that much of gold;"
and the muleteer tapped one of the silver coins that fringed his jacket
sleeves in place of buttons.

"And they are washing the sands for gold there now," said Antonio,
eagerly pointing to some men gathered round a machine like an enormous
cradle. "Let us hasten on."

Father Pedro's momentary interest had passed. The words of his
companions fell dull and meaningless upon his dreaming ears. He was
conscious only that the child was more a stranger to him as an outcome
of this hard, bustling life, than when he believed her borne to him over
the mysterious sea. It perplexed his dazed, disturbed mind to think that
if such an antagonistic element could exist within a dozen miles of
the Mission, and he not know it, could not such an atmosphere have been