r Shannon visits them all,
waits by the Red Butte to confess the shepherds who go through with
their flocks, carries blessing to small and isolated mines, and so in
the course of a year or so works around to Las Uvas to bury and marry
and christen. Then all the little graves in the Campo Santo are brave
with tapers, the brown pine headboards blossom like Aaron's rod with
paper roses and bright cheap prints of Our Lady of Sorrows. Then the
Senora Sevadra, who thinks herself elect of heaven for that office,
gathers up the original sinners, the little Elijias, Lolas, Manuelitas,
Joses, and Felipes, by dint of adjurations and sweets smuggled into
small perspiring palms, to fit them for the Sacrament.

I used to peek in at them, never so softly, in Dona Ina's living-room;
Raphael-eyed little imps, going sidewise on their knees to rest them
from the bare floor, candles lit on the mantel to give a religious air,
and a great sheaf of wild bloom before the Holy Family. Come Sunday they
set out the altar in the schoolhouse, with the fine-drawn altar cloths,
the beaten silver candlesticks, and the wax images, chief glory of Las
Uvas, brought up mule-back from Old Mexico forty years ago. All in white
the communicants go up two and two in a hushed, sweet awe to take the
body of their Lord, and Tomaso, who is priest's boy, tries not to look
unduly puffed up by his office. After that you have dinner and a bottle
of wine that ripened on the sunny slope of Escondito. All the week
Father Shannon has shriven his people, who bring clean conscience to
the betterment of appetite, and the Father sets them an example. Father
Shannon is rather big about the middle to accommodate the large laugh
that lives in him, but a most shrewd searcher of hearts. It is reported
that one derives comfort from his confessional, and I for my part
believe it.

The celebration of the Sixteenth, though it comes every year, takes as
long to prepare for as Holy Communion. The senoritas have each a new
dress apiece, the senoras a new rebosa. The young gentlemen have
new silver trimmings to their sombreros, unspeakable ties, silk
handkerchiefs, and new leathers to their spurs. At this time when the
peppers glow in the gardens and the young quail cry "cuidado," "have a
care!" you can hear the plump, plump of the metate from the alcoves of
the vines where comfortable old dames, whose experience gives them the
touch of art, are pounding out corn for tamales.

School-t