ere Talbot's only companions in
Santa Ursula, although for political reasons he often dropped in at the
saloon of the village and discussed with its polyglot customers such
affairs of the day as penetrated this remote corner of California. And
yet for twenty-three years he had lived in Santa Ursula, year in and
year out, save for brief visits to San Francisco, Sacramento, and the
Southern towns.

Why had he stayed on in this God-forsaken hole after he had become a
rich man? He asked himself the question with some humor as he walked up
and down the corridor of the Mission on this his fortieth birthday; and
he had asked it many times.

To some souls the perfect peace, the warm drowsy beauty of the scene
would have been a conclusive answer. Two friars in their brown robes
passed and repassed him, reading their prayers. Beyond the arches of the
corridor, abruptly below the plateau on which stood the long white
Mission, was, so far as the eye was responsible, an illimitable valley,
cutting the horizon on the south and west, cut by the mountains of Santa
Barbara on the east. The sun was brazen in a dark-blue sky, and under
its downpour the vast olive orchard which covered the valley looked like
a silver sea. The glittering ripples met the blue of the horizon
sharply, crinkled against the lower spurs of the mountain. As a bird
that had skimmed its surface, then plunged for a moment, rose again,
Talbot almost expected to see it shake bright drops from its wings. He
sighed involuntarily as he reflected that in the dark caves and arbors
below it was very cool, far cooler than he would be during an eight-mile
ride under the mid-day sun of Southern California. Then he remembered
that the Senora's _sala_ was also dark and cool, and that part of his
way lay through the cotton-woods and willows by the river; and he smiled
whimsically again. He had salted his long sojourn at Santa Ursula with
much philosophy.

One mountain-peak, detached from the range and within a mile of the
Mission, was dense and dark with forest, broken only here and there by
the bowlders the earth had flung on high in her restless youth. There
was but a winding trail to the top, and few had made acquaintance with
it. John Talbot knew it well, and that to which it led--a lake in the
very cup of the peak, so clear and bright that it reflected every needle
of the dark pines embracing it.

And to the west of the Mission--past the river with its fringe of
cotton-w