ned a
gambling-house and saloon, and made money far more rapidly than he had
done in the northern valley--where, in truth, he had lost much by night
that he had panned out by day. But being a virtuous uncle, if an
imperfect member of society, he soon sent John to the country to look
after a ranch near the Mission of Santa Ursula. The young man never knew
that this fine piece of property had been won over the gambling table
from Don Roberto Ortega, one of the maddest grandees of the Californias.
His grant embraced some fifty thousand acres and was bright in patches
with little olive orchards. John planted with olive-trees, at his own
expense, the twelve thousand acres which had fallen to his uncle's
share; the two men were to be partners, and the younger was to inherit
the elder's share. He inherited nothing else, for his uncle married a
Mexican woman who knifed him and made off with what little money had
been put aside from current extravagances. But John worked hard, bought
_varas_ in San Francisco whenever he had any spare cash, supplied almost
the entire State with olives and olive-oil, and in time became a rich
man.

And his ideal? Only the Indians had driven it temporarily into the
unused chambers of his memory. Not gold-mines, nor his brief taste of
the wild hot life of San Francisco, nor hard work among his olive-trees,
nor increasing wealth and importance, had driven from his mind that
desire born among the tombstones of his native village. It was the woman
herself with a voice as silver as his own olive leaves, who laughed his
dream to death, and left him, still handsome, strong, and lightly
touched by time, a bachelor at forty.

He saw nothing of women for several years after he came to the Mission,
for the one ranch house in the neighborhood was closed, and there was no
village then. He worked among his olive-trees contentedly enough,
spending long profitable evenings with the intellectual priests, who
made him one of their family, and studying law and his favorite science,
political economy. Although the boy was very handsome, with his
sun-burned, well-cut face and fine figure, it never occurred to the
priests that the most romantic of hearts beat beneath that shrewd,
accumulative brain. Of women he had never spoken, except when he had
confided to his friends that he was glad to get away from the very sight
of the terrible creatures of San Francisco; and that he dreamed for
hours among his olive-trees of t