live on the earth so long as she has, I may be worthy of such
reverence as these people all feel for her."

Alessandro turned a grateful look on Ramona as he translated this
speech, so in unison with Indian modes of thought and feeling. A murmur
of pleasure rose from the group of women sitting by. The aged woman made
no reply; her eyes still studied Ramona's face, and she still held her
hand.

"Tell her," continued Ramona, "that I ask if there is anything I can do
for her. Say I will be her daughter if she will let me."

"It must be the Virgin herself that is teaching Majella what to say,"
thought Alessandro, as he repeated this in the San Luiseno tongue.

Again the women murmured pleasure, but the old woman spoke not. "And say
that you will be her son," added Ramona.

Alessandro said it. It was perhaps for this that the old woman had
waited. Lifting up her arm, like a sibyl, she said: "It is well; I am
your mother. The winds of the valley shall love you, and the grass shall
dance when you come. The daughter looks on her mother's face each day. I
will go;" and making a sign to her bearers, she was lifted, and carried
to her house.

The scene affected Ramona deeply. The simplest acts of these people
seemed to her marvellously profound in their meanings. She was not
herself sufficiently educated or versed in life to know why she was so
moved,--to know that such utterances, such symbolisms as these, among
primitive peoples, are thus impressive because they are truly and
grandly dramatic; but she was none the less stirred by them, because she
could not analyze or explain them.

"I will go and see her every day," she said; "she shall be like my
mother, whom I never saw."

"We must both go each day," said Alessandro. "What we have said is a
solemn promise among my people; it would not be possible to break it."

Ysidro's home was in the centre of the village, on a slightly rising
ground; it was a picturesque group of four small houses, three of tule
reeds and one of adobe,--the latter a comfortable little house of two
rooms, with a floor and a shingled roof, both luxuries in San Pasquale.
The great fig-tree, whose luxuriance and size were noted far and near
throughout the country, stood half-way down the slope; but its boughs
shaded all three of the tule houses. On one of its lower branches was
fastened a dove-cote, ingeniously made of willow wands, plastered with
adobe, and containing so many rooms that the whole tr