y. I do not know what became of
it,--if it were left behind, or if they took it with my father's things
to Pachanga. I did not see it there. When I go again, I will look."

"Again!" cried Ramona. "What say you? You go again to Pachanga? You will
not leave me, Alessandro?"

At the bare mention of Alessandro's leaving her, Ramona's courage always
vanished. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, she was transformed
from the dauntless, confident, sunny woman, who bore him up as it were
on wings of hope and faith, to a timid, shrinking, despondent child,
crying out in alarm, and clinging to the hand.

"After a time, dear Majella, when you are wonted to the place, I must
go, to fetch the wagon and the few things that were ours. There is the
raw-hide bed which was Father Peyri's, and he gave to my father. Majella
will like to lie on that. My father believed it had great virtue."

"Like that you made for Felipe?" she asked.

"Yes; but it is not so large. In those days the cattle were not so
large as they are now: this is not so broad as Senor Felipe's. There
are chairs, too, from the Mission, three of them, one almost as fine
as those on your veranda at home. They were given to my father. And
music-books,--beautiful parchment books! Oh, I hope those are not lost,
Majella! If Jose had lived, he would have looked after it all. But in
the confusion, all the things belonging to the village were thrown into
wagons together, and no one knew where anything was. But all the people
knew my father's chairs and the books of the music. If the Americans did
not steal them, everything will be safe. My people do not steal.
There was never but one thief in our village, and my father had him so
whipped, he ran away and never came back. I heard he was living in San
Jacinto, and was a thief yet, spite of all that whipping he had. I think
if it is in the blood to be a thief, not even whipping will take it out,
Majella."

"Like the Americans," she said, half laughing, but with tears in the
voice. "Whipping would not cure them."

It wanted yet more than an hour of dawn when they reached the crest of
the hill from which they looked down on the San Pasquale valley. Two
such crests and valleys they had passed; this was the broadest of the
three valleys, and the hills walling it were softer and rounder of
contour than any they had yet seen. To the east and northeast lay ranges
of high mountains, their tops lost in the clouds. The whole sky was