Sun:"

"Praise be to thee, O Lord, for all thy creatures, and especially for
our brother the Sun,--who illuminates the day, and by his beauty and
splendor shadows forth unto us thine."

"Ramona!" exclaimed the Father, his thin cheeks flushing with pleasure.
"The blessed child!" And as he spoke, her face came into sight, set in
a swaying frame of the blossoms, as she parted them lightly to right and
left with her hands, and half crept, half danced through the loop-hole
openings thus made. Father Salvierderra was past eighty, but his blood
was not too old to move quicker at the sight of this picture. A man must
be dead not to thrill at it. Ramona's beauty was of the sort to be best
enhanced by the waving gold which now framed her face. She had just
enough of olive tint in her complexion to underlie and enrich her skin
without making it swarthy. Her hair was like her Indian mother's, heavy
and black, but her eyes were like her father's, steel-blue. Only those
who came very near to Ramona knew, however, that her eyes were blue, for
the heavy black eyebrows and long black lashes so shaded and shadowed
them that they looked black as night. At the same instant that Father
Salvierderra first caught sight of her face, Ramona also saw him, and
crying out joyfully, "Ah, Father, I knew you would come by this path,
and something told me you were near!" she sprang forward, and sank on
her knees before him, bowing her head for his blessing. In silence he
laid his hands on her brow. It would not have been easy for him to speak
to her at that first moment. She had looked to the devout old monk, as
she sprang through the cloud of golden flowers, the sun falling on
her bared head, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining, more like an
apparition of an angel or saint, than like the flesh-and-blood maiden
whom he had carried in his arms when she was a babe.

"We have been waiting, waiting, oh, so long for you, Father!" she said,
rising. "We began to fear that you might be ill. The shearers have been
sent for, and will be here tonight, and that was the reason I felt so
sure you would come. I knew the Virgin would bring you in time for mass
in the chapel on the first morning."

The monk smiled half sadly. "Would there were more with such faith as
yours, daughter," he said. "Are all well on the place?"

"Yes, Father, all well," she answered. "Felipe has been ill with a
fever; but he is out now, these ten days, and fretting for--for your
comi