erica,--they were mixing and laying the adobes,
making nails and tiles, hewing aqueducts, fashioning great stone fonts
and fountains. De la Torre speculated, after his habit, upon the future
of a country so beautiful and so fertile, which a dozen priests had made
their own. Would these Indians, the poorest apologies for human beings
he had ever seen, the laziest and the dirtiest, be Christianized and
terrified into worthy citizens of this fair land? Could the clear white
flame that burned in the brains of the padres strike fire in their
neophytes' narrow skulls, create a soul in those grovelling bodies? He
dismissed the question.

Would men of race, tempted by the loveliness of this great gold-haired
houri sleeping on the Pacific, come from old and new Spain and dream
away a life of pleasure? What grapes would grow out of this rich soil
to be crushed by Indian slaves into red wine! And did gold vein those
velvet hills? How all fruits, all grains, would thrive! what superb
beasts would fatten on the thick spring grass! Ay! it was a magnificent
discovery for the Church, and great would be the power that could wrest
it from her.

There was a new people, somewhere north of Mexico, in the United States
of America. Would they ever covet and strive to rob? The worse for them
if they molested the fire-blooded Spaniard. How he should like to fight
them!

That night the sentinel gave a sudden piercing shout of warning, then
dropped dead with a poisoned arrow in his brain. Another moment, and
the soldiers had leaped from their swinging beds of hide, and headed by
their captain had reached the church they were there to defend. Through
plaza and corridors sped and shrieked the savage tribe, whose invasion
had been made with the swiftness and cunning of their race. The doors
had not been hung in the church, and the naked figures ran in upon the
heels of the soldiers, waving torches and yelling like the soulless
fiends they were. The few neophytes who retained spirit enough to fight
after the bleaching process that had chilled their native fire and
produced a result which was neither man nor beast, but a sort of
barnyard fowl, hopped about under the weight of their blankets and were
promptly despatched.

The brunt of the battle fell upon the small detachment of troops, and
at the outset they were overwhelmed by numbers, dazzled by the glare of
torches that waved and leaped in the cavern-like darkness of the church.
But they fough