"Shrive me first," said the dying man.

But the priest still hesitated, parleying with the sufferer until the
ship's bell struck, when, with a triumphant, mocking laugh from the
stranger, the vessel suddenly fell to pieces, amid the rushing of waters
which at once involved the dying man, the priest, and the mysterious
stranger.

The Padre did not recover his consciousness until high noon the next
day, when he found himself lying in a little hollow between the Mission
Hills, and his faithful mule a few paces from him, cropping the sparse
herbage. The Padre made the best of his way home, but wisely abstained
from narrating the facts mentioned above, until after the discovery of
gold, when the whole of this veracious incident was related, with the
assertion of the padre that the secret which was thus mysteriously
snatched from his possession was nothing more than the discovery of
gold, years since, by the runaway sailors from the expedition of Sir
Francis Drake.




THE LEGEND OF DEVIL'S POINT.


On the northerly shore of San Francisco Bay, at a point where the Golden
Gate broadens into the Pacific stands a bluff promontory. It affords
shelter from the prevailing winds to a semicircular bay on the east.
Around this bay the hillside is bleak and barren, but there are traces