he thoroughbred creature who was one day
to reward his labors and make him the happiest of mortals never entered
the imagination of the good padres.

He was twenty and the ranch was his when he met Delfina Carillo. Don
Roberto Ortega had opportunely died before gambling away more than half
of his estate, and his widow, who was delicate, left the ranch near
Monterey, where they had lived for many years, and came to bake brown in
the hot suns of the South. Her son, Don Enrique, came with her, and John
saw him night and morning riding about the country at top speed, and
sometimes clattering up to the corridor of the Mission and calling for a
glass of wine. He was a magnificent caballero, slim and dark, with
large melting eyes and long hair on a little head. He wore small-clothes
of gayly colored silk, with much lace on his shirt and silver on his
sombrero. His long yellow botas were laced with silver, and his saddle
was so loaded with the same metal that only a Californian horse could
have carried it. John turned up his nose at this gorgeous apparition,
and likened him to a "play actor" and a circus rider; nevertheless, he
was very curious to see something of the life of the Californian
grandee, of which he had heard much and seen nothing, and when Padre
Ortega, who was a cousin of the widow, told him that a large company was
expected within a fortnight, and that he had asked permission to take
his young friend to the ball with which the festivities would open, John
began to indulge in the pleasurable anticipations of youth.

But he did not occupy the interval with dreams alone. He went to San
Francisco and bought himself a wardrobe suitable for polite society. It
was an American outfit, not Californian, but had John possessed the
wealth of the northern valleys he could not have been induced to put
himself into silk and lace.

The stage did not go to Santa Ursula, but a servant met him at a station
twenty miles from home with a horse, and a cart for his trunk. He
washed off the dust of three days' travel in a neighboring creek, then
jumped on his big gray mare, and started at a mild gallop for his ranch.
He felt like singing his contentment with the world, for the morning was
radiant, he was on one of the finest horses of the country, and he was
as light of heart as a boy should be who has received a hint from
fortune that he is one of the favorites. He looked forward to the social
ordeal without apprehension, for by thi