sly in the Father's face. "How is that, Father?"
he said. "I do not know."

"Well, their rules be thick as the crabs here on the beach," replied
Father Gaspara; "and, faith, they appear to me to be backwards of motion
also, like the crabs: but the lawyers understand. When you have picked
out your land, and have the money, come to me, and I will go with you
and see that you are not cheated in the buying, so far as I can tell;
but I myself am at my wit's ends with their devices. Farewell, son!
Farewell, daughter!" he said, rising from his chair. Hunger was again
getting the better of sympathy in Father Gaspara, and as he sat down
to his long-deferred supper, the Indian couple faded from his mind; but
after supper was over, as he sat smoking his pipe on the veranda, they
returned again, and lingered in his thoughts,--lingered strangely, it
seemed to him; he could not shake off the impression that there was
something unusual about the woman. "I shall hear of them again, some
day," he thought. And he thought rightly.

XIX

AFTER leaving Father Gaspara's door, Alessandro and Ramona rode slowly
through the now deserted plaza, and turned northward, on the river road,
leaving the old Presidio walls on their right. The river was low, and
they forded it without difficulty.

"I have seen this river so high that there was no fording it for many
days," said Alessandro; "but that was in spring."

"Then it is well we came not at that time," said Ramona, "All the times
have fallen out well for us, Alessandro,--the dark nights, and the
streams low; but look! as I say it, there comes the moon!" and she
pointed to the fine threadlike arc of the new moon, just visible in the
sky. "Not big enough to do us any harm, however," she added. "But, dear
Alessandro, do you not think we are safe now?"

"I know not, Majella, if ever we may be safe; but I hope so. I have been
all day thinking I had gone foolish last night, when I told Mrs. Hartsel
that I was on my way to San Pasquale. But if men should come there
asking for us, she would understand, I think, and keep a still tongue.
She would keep harm from us if she could."

Their way from San Diego to San Pasquale lay at first along a high mesa,
or table-land, covered with low shrub growths; after some ten or twelve
miles of this, they descended among winding ridges, into a narrow
valley,--the Poway valley. It was here that the Mexicans made one of
their few abortive efforts to repel th