ight. The woman was
crying bitterly. "More of these exiles. God help the poor creatures!"
thought Felipe; and he pulled out his purse, and gave the woman a piece
of gold. She looked up in as great astonishment as if the money had
fallen from the skies. "Thanks! Thanks, Senor!" she exclaimed; and the
man coming up to Felipe said also, "God reward you, Senor! That is more
money than I had in the world! Does the Senor know of any place where I
could get work?"

Felipe longed to say, "Yes, come to my estate; there you shall have
work!" In the olden time he would have done it without a second thought,
for both the man and the woman had good faces,--were young and strong.
But the pay-roll of the Moreno estate was even now too long for
its dwindled fortunes. "No, my man, I am sorry to say I do not," he
answered. "I live a long way from here. Where were you thinking of
going?"

"Somewhere in San Jacinto," said the man. "They say the Americans have
not come in there much yet. I have a brother living there. Thanks,
Senor; may the saints reward you!"

"San Jacinto!" After Felipe returned home, the name haunted his
thoughts. The grand mountain-top bearing that name he had known well
in many a distant horizon. "Juan Can," he said one day, "are there many
Indians in San Jacinto?"

"The mountain?" said Juan Can.

"Ay, I suppose, the mountain," said Felipe. "What else is there?"

"The valley, too," replied Juan. "The San Jacinto Valley is a fine,
broad valley, though the river is not much to be counted on. It is
mostly dry sand a good part of the year. But there is good grazing.
There is one village of Indians I know in the valley; some of the
San Luis Rey Indians came from there; and up on the mountain is a big
village; the wildest Indians in all the country live there. Oh, they are
fierce, Senor!"

The next morning Felipe set out for San Jacinto. Why had no one
mentioned, why had he not himself known, of these villages? Perhaps
there were yet others he had not heard of. Hope sprang in Felipe's
impressionable nature as easily as it died. An hour, a moment, might see
him both lifted up and cast down. When he rode into the sleepy little
village street of San Bernardino, and saw, in the near horizon, against
the southern sky, a superb mountain-peak, changing in the sunset lights
from turquoise to ruby, and from ruby to turquoise again, he said to
himself, "She is there! I have found her!"

The sight of the mountain affected hi