was this little bit
of land near the church, which had been overlooked by everybody, and to
which nobody had any written title. He went over and looked at it, and
found Ysidro's house on it; and Ysidro told him he had always lived
there; but the lawyer did not care for that.

Land is worth a great deal of money now in San Gabriel. This little
place of Ysidro's was worth a good many hundred dollars; and this lawyer
was determined to have it. So he went to work in ways I cannot explain
to you, for I do not understand them myself; and you could not
understand them even if I could write them out exactly: but it was all
done according to law; and the lawyer got it decided by the courts and
the judges in San Francisco that this bit of land was his.

When this was all done, he had not quite boldness enough to come forward
himself, and turn the poor old Indians out. Even he had some sense of
shame; so he slyly sold the land to a man who did not know anything
about the Indians being there.

You see how cunning this was of him! When it came to the Indians being
turned out, and the land taken by the new owner, this lawyer's name
would not need to come out in the matter at all. But it did come out; so
that a few people knew what a mean, cruel thing he had done. Just for
the sake of the price of an acre of land, to turn two aged helpless
people out of house and home to starve! Do you think those dollars will
ever do that man any good as long as he lives? No, not if they had been
a million.

Well, Mr. Connor was one of the persons who had found out about this;
and he had at first thought he would help Ysidro fight, in the courts,
to keep his place; but he found there would be no use in that. The
lawyer had been cunning enough to make sure he was safe, before he went
on to steal the old Indian's farm. The law was on his side. Ysidro did
not really own the land, according to law, though he had lived on it all
his life, and it had been given to his father by the missionaries,
almost a hundred years ago.

Does it not seem strange that the law could do such a thing as that?
When the boys who read this story grow up to be men, I hope they will
do away with these bad laws, and make better ones.

The way Rea had found out about old Ysidro was this: when Jim went to
the post-office for the mail, in the mornings, he used generally to take
Anita and Rea in the wagon with him, and leave them at Anita's mother's
while he drove on to the p