at could it mean? Could it be possible that this was another
Alessandro than the one of whom he was in search? Felipe bethought
himself of a possible marriage-record. Did they know where Alessandro
had married this wife of his, of whom every word they spoke seemed both
like and unlike Ramona?

Yes. It was in San Diego they had been married, by Father Gaspara.

Hoping against hope, the baffled Felipe rode on to San Diego; and here,
as ill-luck would have it, he found, not Father Gaspara, who would at
his first word have understood all, but a young Irish priest, who had
only just come to be Father Gaspara's assistant. Father Gaspara was
away in the mountains, at Santa Ysabel. But the young assistant would do
equally well, to examine the records. He was courteous and kind; brought
out the tattered old book, and, looking over his shoulder, his breath
coming fast with excitement and fear, there Felipe read, in Father
Gaspara's hasty and blotted characters, the fatal entry of the names,
"Alessandro Assis and Majella Fa--"

Heart-sick, Felipe went away. Most certainly Ramona would never have
been married under any but her own name. Who, then, was this woman whom
Alessandro Assis had married in less than ten days from the night on
which Ramona had left her home? Some Indian woman for whom he felt
compassion, or to whom he was bound by previous ties? And where, in what
lonely, forever hidden spot, was the grave of Ramona?

Now at last Felipe felt sure that she was dead. It was useless searching
farther. Yet, after he reached home, his restless conjectures took one
more turn, and he sat down and wrote a letter to every priest between
San Diego and Monterey, asking if there were on his books a record of
the marriage of one Alessandro Assis and Ramona Ortegna.

It was not impossible that there might be, after all, another Alessandro
Assis, The old Fathers, in baptizing their tens of thousands of Indian
converts, were sore put to it to make out names enough. There might
have been another Assis besides old Pablo, and of Alessandros there were
dozens everywhere.

This last faint hope also failed. No record anywhere of an Alessandro
Assis, except in Father Gaspara's book.

As Felipe was riding out of San Pasquale, he had seen an Indian man and
woman walking by the side of mules heavily laden. Two little children,
two young or too feeble to walk, were so packed in among the bundles
that their faces were the only part of them in s