Changes in the manners and customs of his order itself, also, were
giving him deep pain. He was a Franciscan of the same type as
Francis of Assisi. To wear a shoe in place of a sandal, to take
money in a purse for a journey, above all to lay aside the gray
gown and cowl for any sort of secular garment, seemed to him
wicked. To own comfortable clothes while there were others
suffering for want of them -- and there were always such -- seemed
to him a sin for which one might not undeservedly be smitten with
sudden and terrible punishment. In vain the Brothers again and
again supplied him with a warm cloak; he gave it away to the first
beggar he met: and as for food, the refectory would have been left
bare, and the whole brotherhood starving, if the supplies had not
been carefully hidden and locked, so that Father Salvierderra could
not give them all away. He was fast becoming that most tragic yet
often sublime sight, a man who has survived, not only his own
time, but the ideas and ideals of it. Earth holds no sharper
loneliness: the bitterness of exile, the anguish of friendlessness at
their utmost, are in it; and yet it is so much greater than they, that
even they seem small part of it.

It was with thoughts such as these that Father Salvierderra drew
near the home of the Senora Moreno late in the afternoon of one of
those midsummer days of which Southern California has so many
in spring. The almonds had bloomed and the blossoms fallen; the
apricots also, and the peaches and pears; on all the orchards of
these fruits had come a filmy tint of green, so light it was hardly
more than a shadow on the gray. The willows were vivid light
green, and the orange groves dark and glossy like laurel. The
billowy hills on either side the valley were covered with verdure
and bloom,-- myriads of low blossoming plants, so close to the