before Father Salvierderra arrived. The old man had grown feeble
during the year that she had not seen him, and it was a very short
day's journey that he could make now without too great fatigue. It
was not only his body that had failed. He had lost heart; and the
miles which would have been nothing to him, had he walked in the
companionship of hopeful and happy thoughts, stretched out
wearily as he brooded over sad memories and still sadder
anticipations,-- the downfall of the Missions, the loss of their vast
estates, and the growing power of the ungodly in the land. The
final decision of the United States Government in regard to the
Mission-lands had been a terrible blow to him. He had devoutly
believed that ultimate restoration of these great estates to the
Church was inevitable. In the long vigils which he always kept
when at home at the Franciscan Monastery in Santa Barbara,
kneeling on the stone pavement in the church, and praying
ceaselessly from midnight till dawn, he had often had visions
vouchsafed him of a new dispensation, in which the Mission
establishments should be reinstated in all their old splendor and
prosperity, and their Indian converts again numbered by tens of
thousands.

Long after every one knew that this was impossible, he would
narrate these visions with the faith of an old Bible seer, and
declare that they must come true, and that it was a sin to despond.
But as year after year he journeyed up and down the country,
seeing, at Mission after Mission, the buildings crumbling into ruin,
the lands all taken, sold, resold, and settled by greedy speculators;
the Indian converts disappearing, driven back to their original
wildernesses, the last traces of the noble work of his order being
rapidly swept away, his courage faltered, his faith died out.