and again--muy querida; alas! muy querida.

In the shade of a high remaining piece of the ancient mudbrick wall,
three Mexicans, with cigarettes and sombreros, and gaudy as tulips in
their striped serapes, were gambling, sleepily, at cards: from one of
the little houses came the sleepy tinkling of a mandolin--muy querida.
I wandered over to the edge of the little cemetery, and, sitting down,
leaned against the hot wall, under the sleepy, flickering shade of the
neglected olives and expiring walnuts of the Mission garden. Sleepily I
watched the anxious labors of a hornet, busily building its nest of
clay. A dragonfly hung for a moment before me, then alighted on a leaf
and was suddenly smitten asleep. Everything drowsed, except the
everlasting sun, pouring down ceaselessly his shriveling rays. Again,
over and over, my mind dreamily repeated the words--only eighteen,
married, and dead: muy querida.


The bells of the Mission are ringing, clear and strong, under the
practiced hand of old Gregorio. Who can ring like he? And to-day, of all
days, he is doing his best, for it is the fiesta of the blessed San
Gabriel himself, and there are people come from all the towns of the
valley, to say nothing of Los Angeles, to the fiesta. Not but what the
saint has his day every year; but this particular day is a day of days,
a fiesta of fiestas: for the Padre has arranged a procession in San
Gabriel's honor, and what Mexican would not ride thirty miles to see a
procession? So to the hitching-posts all up the long street are tied
tired horses that have come that hot morning from San Fernando, and
Calabasas, and farther still. And here and there is a wagon that has
brought a whole family, all to do honor to San Gabriel, and to see the
sight of the day. And that is, pre'minently, Ysabel Alvarado, the beauty