took the black veil and perpetual vows. Of course the convent had a
school at once. Concha's school had been a convent of a sort and the
Bishop merely took it over. All the flower of California have been
educated by Concha Argueello, including Chonita Estenega who is so great
a lady in Mexico today. Two years later we came here, and here we shall
stay, no doubt. I think Concha loved Benicia better than any part of
California she had known, for it was still California without too
piercing reminders of the past: life at the other Presidios and Missions
was but the counterpart of our San Francisco, and here the priests and
military had never come. In this beautiful wild spot where the elk and
the antelope and the deer run about like rabbits, and you meet a bear if
you go too far--Holy Mary!--where she went sometimes in a boat among the
tules on the river, and where one may believe the moon lives in a silver
lake in the old crater of Monte Diablo--Ay, it was different enough and
might bring peace to any heart. What she must have suffered for years
in those familiar scenes! But she never told. And now she lies here
under her little cross and he in Krasnoiarsk--under a stone shaped like
an altar, they say. Well! who knows? That is all. I go in now; my old
bones ache with the night damp. But my mind is lighter, although never I
shall speak of this again. And do you not think of it any more.
Curiosity and the world and such nonsense as love and romance are not
for us. Go to bed at once and tie a stocking round your throat that you
have not a frog in it tomorrow morning when you sing 'Glory be to God on
High.' _Buen Dias!_"

THE FORD OF CREVECOEUR

BY

MARY AUSTIN

Reprinted from _Out West_ by permission.

YES. I understand; you are M'siu the Notary, M'siu the Sheriff has told
me. You are come to hear how by the help of God I have killed Filon
Geraud at the ford of Crevecoeur. By the help of God, yes. Think you if
the devil had a hand in it, he would not have helped Filon? For he was
the devil's own, was Filon. He was big, he was beautiful, he had a
way--but always there was the devil's mark. I see that the first time
ever I knew him at Agua Caliente. The devil sit in Filon's eyes and
laugh--laugh--some time he go away like a man at a window, but he come
again. M'siu, he _live_ there! And Filon, he know that I see, so he make
like he not care; but I think he care a little, else why he make for
torment me all the ti