do the same herself; but whatever she, by policy or in business,
might be forced to do, the old house, at any rate, would always
keep the attitude of contempt,-- its face turned away.

One other pleasure she provided herself with, soon after this road
was opened,-- a pleasure in which religious devotion and race
antagonism were so closely blended that it would have puzzled the
subtlest of priests to decide whether her act were a sin or a virtue.
She caused to be set up, upon every one of the soft rounded hills
which made the beautiful rolling sides of that part of the valley, a
large wooden cross; not a hill in sight of her house left without the
sacred emblem of her faith. "That the heretics may know, when
they go by, that they are on the estate of a good Catholic," she said,
"and that the faithful may be reminded to pray. There have been
miracles of conversion wrought on the most hardened by a sudden
sight of the Blessed Cross."

There they stood, summer and winter, rain and shine, the silent,
solemn, outstretched arms, and became landmarks to many a
guideless traveller who had been told that his way would be by the
first turn to the left or the right, after passing the last one of the
Senora Moreno's crosses, which he couldn't miss seeing. And who
shall say that it did not often happen that the crosses bore a sudden
message to some idle heart journeying by, and thus justified the
pious half of the Senora's impulse? Certain it is, that many a good
Catholic halted and crossed himself when he first beheld them, in
the lonely places, standing out in sudden relief against the blue
sky; and if he said a swift short prayer at the sight, was he not so
much the better?