ks, and later on, the
regular rise and fall of oars. And then the darkness fell heavier, the
sounds became more and more indistinct and were utterly lost.

Ashore, however, the lanterns still glittered brightly in the courtyard
of the Presidio; the noise of laughter and revel still came from the
supper-room, and, later, the tinkling of guitars and rhythmical
clapping hands showed that the festivities were being wound up by a
characteristic fandango. Captain Bunker succumbed early to his potations
of fiery aguardiente, and was put to bed in the room of the Commander,
to whom he had sworn eternal friendship and alliance. It was long
past midnight before the other guests were disposed of in the various
quarters of the Presidio; but to the ladies were reserved the more
ostentatious hospitalities of the Alcalde himself, the walls of whose
ambitious hacienda raised themselves across the plaza and overlooked the
gardens of the Mission.

It was from one of the deep, quaintly barred windows of the hacienda
that Miss Keene gazed thoughtfully on the night, unable to compose
herself to sleep. An antique guest-chamber had been assigned to her in
deference to her wish to be alone, for which she had declined the couch
and vivacious prattle of her new friend, Dona Isabel. The events of the
day had impressed her more deeply than they had her companions, partly
from her peculiar inexperience of the world, and partly from her
singular sensitiveness to external causes. The whole quaint story of
the forgotten and isolated settlement, which had seemed to the other
passengers as a trivial and half humorous incident, affected her
imagination profoundly. When she could escape the attentions of her
entertainers, or the frivolities of her companions, she tried to touch
the far-off past on the wings of her fancy; she tried to imagine the
life of those people, forgetting the world and forgotten by it; she
endeavored to picture the fifty years of solitude amidst these decaying
ruins, over which even ambition had crumbled and fallen. It seemed to
her the true conventual seclusion from the world without the loss of
kinship or home influences; she contrasted it with her boarding-school
life in the fashionable seminary; she wondered what she would have
become had she been brought up here; she thought of the happy ignorance
of Dona Isabel, and--shuddered; and yet she felt herself examining
the odd furniture of the room with an equally childlike and admi