put into the harbour of the island for
repairs. Several of the men went on shore. They discovered footprints in
the sand. Wondering, for they had sailed the length of the island and
seen no sign of habitation, they followed the steps. They came upon a
curious creature which was scraping with a bone knife the blubber from
a seal. At first they thought it was a bird of some unknown species, so
sharp was its beak, so brilliant its plumage. But when they spoke to it
and it sprang aside and confronted them, they saw that the creature was
an aged woman. Her face was like an old black apple, within whose skin
the pulp had shrunk and withered as it lay forgotten on the ground. Her
tawny hair hung along her back like a ragged mat. There was no light in
the dim vacuous eyes. She wore a garment made of the unplucked skins of
birds. They spoke to her. She uttered a gibberish unknown to them with a
voice that croaked like a frog's, then went down on her creaking knees
and lifted her hands to the sun.

THE HEAD OF A PRIEST

I

"Dona Concepcion had the greatest romance of us all; so she should not
chide too bitterly."

"But she has such a sense of her duty! Such a sense of her duty! Ay,
Dios de mi alma! Shall we ever grow like that?"

"If we have a Russian lover who is killed in the far North, and we have
a convent built for us, and teach troublesome girls. Surely, if one goes
through fire, one can become anything--"

"Ay, yi! Look! Look!"

Six dark heads were set in a row along the edge of a secluded corner of
the high adobe wall surrounding the Convent of Monterey. They looked
for all the world like a row of charming gargoyles--every mouth was
open--although there was no blankness in those active mischief-hunting
eyes. Their bodies, propped on boxes, were concealed by the wall from
the passer-by, and from the sharp eyes of duenas by a group of trees
just behind them. Their section of the wall faced the Presidio, which in
the early days of the eighteenth century had not lost an adobe, and was
full of active life. At one end was the house of the Governor of all the
Californias, at another the church, which is all that stands to-day.
Under other walls of the square were barracks, quarters for officers and
their families, store-rooms for ammunition and general supplies in case
of a raid by hostile tribes (when all the town must be accommodated
within the security of those four great walls), and a large hall in
which ma