“‘Then you will die unmarried,’ said her mother, kissing the soft cheek, ‘for travelers seldom come as far as San Francisco.’

“‘A ship! a ship!’ sounded a cry from the plaza.  A vessel had been sighted off Cantil Blanco, the first foreign ship seen since Vancouver’s visit fourteen years before.

“’It is the Russian expedition which Spain has ordered us to treat courteously,’ exclaimed Don Luis, bursting into the house, his face aglow with excitement.  ’Since father is in Monterey and I am acting Comandante, I must receive these strangers,’ he continued as he threw his serape over his shoulders, his eyes flashing with his first taste of command.

“‘Be careful,’ cautioned his mother, ’we have had no word from Europe for nine months and the last packet boat from Mexico brought a rumor of war with Russia.’

“But the foreign vessel had come only with friendly intentions.  The Russian Chamberlain Rezanov, in charge of the Czar’s northwestern possessions, had found a starving colony at Sitka and had brought a cargo of goods to the more productive southland with the hope of exchanging it for foodstuffs.  To be sure, he knew the Spanish law strictly forbidding trade with foreign vessels, but it seemed the only means of saving his famishing people and he trusted much to his skill in diplomacy.

“A few hours later, Concha, on the qui vive with excitement, saw her brother approaching with a little company of men, among whom was a tall well-built Russian officer, whose keen eyes seemed to take in every detail of the little settlement.

“Don Luis conducted his guests to the old adobe building, draped in pink Castilian roses, and into the cool sala, which, although provided with slippery horse-hair chairs and plain whitewashed walls ornamented with pictures of the Virgin and saints, was a pleasing contrast to the ship’s cabin.  Here he presented his guests to his mother, a woman whose face still reflected much of the beauty of her youth in spite of her cares which had come in the rearing of her thirteen children.  Beside her stood Concepcion.  Her long drooping lashes swept her cheeks, but when she raised her eyes in greeting Rezanov saw that they were dark and joyous.  He was a widower of many years, a man of forty-two, who had given little thought to women during his wandering life, but now he found himself keenly alive to the charms of this radiant girl.  Simple and artless in her manners, yet possessing the early maturity of her race, she set her guests at ease and entertained them with stories of life on the great ranchos, while her mother was busy with household duties.