a adjusting a silk skull cap
on his tonsured head. He wore his cassock now, and was far more the
churchman in appearance than when Vanamee and Presley had seen him on a
former occasion.

They were now in the cloister garden. The place was charming. Everywhere
grew clumps of palms and magnolia trees. A grapevine, over a century
old, occupied a trellis in one angle of the walls which surrounded the
garden on two sides. Along the third side was the church itself, while
the fourth was open, the wall having crumbled away, its site marked
only by a line of eight great pear trees, older even than the grapevine,
gnarled, twisted, bearing no fruit. Directly opposite the pear trees,
in the south wall of the garden, was a round, arched portal, whose gate
giving upon the esplanade in front of the Mission was always closed.
Small gravelled walks, well kept, bordered with mignonette, twisted
about among the flower beds, and underneath the magnolia trees. In the
centre was a little fountain in a stone basin green with moss, while
just beyond, between the fountain and the pear trees, stood what was
left of a sun dial, the bronze gnomon, green with the beatings of
the weather, the figures on the half-circle of the dial worn away,
illegible.

But on the other side of the fountain, and directly opposite the door
of the Mission, ranged against the wall, were nine graves--three with
headstones, the rest with slabs. Two of Sarria's predecessors were
buried here; three of the graves were those of Mission Indians. One was
thought to contain a former alcalde of Guadalajara; two more held the
bodies of De La Cuesta and his young wife (taking with her to the grave
the illusion of her husband's love), and the last one, the ninth, at
the end of the line, nearest the pear trees, was marked by a little
headstone, the smallest of any, on which, together with the proper
dates--only sixteen years apart--was cut the name "Angele Varian."

But the quiet, the repose, the isolation of the little cloister garden
was infinitely delicious. It was a tiny corner of the great valley that
stretched in all directions around it--shut off, discreet, romantic, a
garden of dreams, of enchantments, of illusions. Outside there, far
off, the great grim world went clashing through its grooves, but in
here never an echo of the grinding of its wheels entered to jar upon the
subdued modulation of the fountain's uninterrupted murmur.

Sarria and Vanamee found their way to