some of you," he looked at Father Pedro, "how I first discovered,
from one of the men, three years ago, that the child was not found by
its father. But I have never told any one, before now, I KNEW it was
picked up here.

"I never could tell the exact locality where I came ashore, for the fog
was coming on as it is now. But two years ago I came up with a party of
gold hunters to work these sands. One day, digging near this creek, I
struck something embedded deep below the surface. Well, gentlemen, it
wasn't gold, but something worth more to me than gold or silver. Here it
is."

At a sign the alcalde unlocked the doors and threw them open. They
disclosed an irregular trench, in which, filled with sand, lay the
half-excavated stern of a boat.

"It was the dingy of the Trinidad, gentlemen; you can still read her
name. I found hidden away, tucked under the stern sheets, mouldy and
water-worn, some clothes that I recognized to be the baby's. I knew
then that the child had been taken away alive for some purpose, and
the clothes were left so that she should carry no trace with her.
I recognized the hand of an Indian. I set to work quietly. I found
Sanchicha here, she confessed to finding a baby, but what she had done
with it she would not at first say. But since then she has declared
before the alcalde that she gave it to Father Pedro, of San Carmel, and
that here it stands--Francisco that was! Francisca that it is!"

He stepped aside to make way for a tall girl, who had approached from
the cottage.

Father Pedro had neither noticed the concluding words nor the movement
of Cranch. His eyes were fixed upon the imbecile Sanchicha,--Sanchicha,
on whom, to render his rebuke more complete, the Deity seemed to have
worked a miracle, and restored intelligence to eye and lip. He passed
his hand tremblingly across his forehead, and turned away, when his eye
fell upon the last comer.

It was she. The moment he had longed for and dreaded had come. She stood
there, animated, handsome, filled with a hurtful consciousness in
her new charms, her fresh finery, and the pitiable trinkets that had
supplanted her scapulary, and which played under her foolish fingers.
The past had no place in her preoccupied mind; her bright eyes were
full of eager anticipation of a substantial future. The incarnation of a
frivolous world, even as she extended one hand to him in half-coquettish
embarrassment she arranged the folds of her dress with the oth