. Hartsel," he said
as he rode away; "and we will come by this road and stop to see you."
And the very speaking of the words cheered him all the way to San
Pasquale.

But before he had been in San Pasquale an hour, he was plunged into a
perplexity and disappointment deeper than he had yet felt. He found the
village in disorder, the fields neglected, many houses deserted, the
remainder of the people preparing to move away. In the house of Ysidro,
Alessandro's kinsman, was living a white family,--the family of a man
who had pre-empted the greater part of the land on which the village
stood. Ysidro, profiting by Alessandro's example, when he found
that there was no help, that the American had his papers from the
land-office, in all due form, certifying that the land was his, had
given the man his option of paying for the house or having it burned
down. The man had bought the house; and it was only the week before
Felipe arrived, that Ysidro had set off, with all his goods and
chattels, for Mesa Grande. He might possibly have told the Senor more,
the people said, than any one now in the village could; but even Ysidro
did not know where Alessandro intended to settle. He told no one. He
went to the north. That was all they knew.

To the north! That north which Felipe thought he had thoroughly
searched. He sighed at the word. The Senor could, if he liked, see the
house in which Alessandro had lived. There it was, on the south side of
the valley, just in the edge of the foothills; some Americans lived in
it now. Such a good ranch Alessandro had; the best wheat in the valley.
The American had paid Alessandro something for it,--they did not know
how much; but Alessandro was very lucky to get anything. If only they
had listened to him. He was always telling them this would come. Now it
was too late for most of them to get anything for their farms. One man
had taken the whole of the village lands, and he had bought Ysidro's
house because it was the best; and so they would not get anything. They
were utterly disheartened, broken-spirited.

In his sympathy for them, Felipe almost forgot his own distresses.
"Where are you going?" he asked of several.

"Who knows, Senor?" was their reply. "Where can we go? There is no
place."

When, in reply to his questions in regard to Alessandro's wife, Felipe
heard her spoken of as "Majella," his perplexity deepened. Finally he
asked if no one had ever heard the name Ramona.

"Never."

Wh