shining on its dirty white walls and red-tiled roof,
and I'll sit me down in the shade of a manzanita bush and wait, because
that's my valley and I know what's coming.

"Exactly at six o'clock, I shall see a figure come out on the roof of the
mission and stand in front of the old gallows-frame on which hang eight
chimes that were carried in on mules from the City of Mexico when
Junipero Serra planted the cross of Catholicism at San Diego, in 1769.
That distant figure will be Brother Flavio, of the Franciscan Order, and
the old boy is going to ramp up and down in front of those chimes with a
hammer and give me a concert. He'll bang out 'Adeste Fideles' and
'Gloria in Excelsis.' That's a cinch, because he's a creature of habit.
Occasionally he plays 'Lead, Kindly Light' and 'Ave Maria'!"

Farrel paused, a faint smile of amusement fringing his handsome mouth.
He rolled and lighted a cigarette and continued:

"My father wrote me that old Brother Flavio, after a terrible battle with
his own conscience and at the risk of being hove out of the valley by his
indignant superior, Father Dominic, was practising 'Hail, The Conquering
Hero Comes!' against the day of my home-coming. I wrote father to tell
Brother Flavio to cut that out and substitute 'In the Good Old
Summertime' if he wanted to make a hit with me. Awfully good old hunks,
Brother Flavio! He knows I like those old chimes, and, when I'm home, he
most certainly bangs them so the melody will carry clear up to the
Palomar."

The captain was gazing with increasing amazement upon his former first
sergeant. After eighteen months, he had discovered a man he had not
known heretofore."

"And after the 'Angelus'--what?" he demanded.

Farrel's smug little smile of complacency had broadened.

"Well, sir, when Brother Flavio pegs out, I'll get up and run down to the
Mission, where Father Dominic, Father Andreas, Brother Flavio, Brother
Anthony, and Brother Benedict will all extend a welcome and muss me up,
and we'll all talk at once and get nowhere with the conversation for the
first five minutes. Brother Anthony is just a little bit--ah--nutty, but
harmless. He'll want to know how many men I've killed, and I'll tell him
two hundred and nineteen. He has a leaning toward odd numbers, as
tending more toward exactitude. Right away, he'll go into the chapel and
pray for their souls, and while he's at this pious exercise, Father
Dominic will dig up a bottle of old wine t