od ever came of it.
There were Alvarados in Sonora, look you, who had mines of SILVER, and
worked them with peons and mules, and lost their money--a gold mine to
work a silver one--like gentlemen! But this grubbing in the dirt with
one's fingers, that a little gold may stick to them, is not for
caballeros. And then, one says nothing of the curse."

"The curse!" echoed Mary Mulrady, with youthful feminine superstition.
"What is that?"

"You knew not, friend Mulrady, that when these lands were given to my
ancestors by Charles V., the Bishop of Monterey laid a curse upon any
who should desecrate them. Good! Let us see! Of the three Americanos
who founded yonder town, one was shot, another died of a
fever--poisoned, you understand, by the soil--and the last got himself
crazy of aguardiente. Even the scientifico,[1] who came here years ago
and spied into the trees and the herbs: he was afterwards punished for
his profanation, and died of an accident in other lands. But," added
Don Ramon, with grave courtesy, "this touches not yourself. Through
me, YOU are of the soil."

Indeed, it would seem as if a secure if not a rapid prosperity was the
result of Don Ramon's manorial patronage. The potato patch and market
garden flourished exceedingly; the rich soil responded with magnificent
vagaries of growth; the even sunshine set the seasons at defiance with
extraordinary and premature crops. The salt pork and biscuit consuming
settlers did not allow their contempt of Mulrady's occupation to
prevent their profiting by this opportunity for changing their diet.
The gold they had taken from the soil presently began to flow into his
pockets in exchange for his more modest treasures. The little cabin,
which barely sheltered his family--a wife, son, and daughter--was
enlarged, extended, and refitted, but in turn abandoned for a more
pretentious house on the opposite hill. A whitewashed fence replaced
the rudely-split rails, which had kept out the wilderness. By degrees,
the first evidences of cultivation--the gashes of red soil, the piles
of brush and undergrowth, the bared boulders, and heaps of
stone--melted away, and were lost under a carpet of lighter green,
which made an oasis in the tawny desert of wild oats on the hillside.
Water was the only free boon denied this Garden of Eden; what was
necessary for irrigation had to be brought from a mining ditch at great
expense, and was of insufficient quantity. In this emergen