“Yes, it was poorly fortified, and the Californians had known for some time that Mexico was losing its hold, so the event was not unexpected.  But there was no flag to pull down for the receiver of customs, realizing that resistance was useless, had packed the Mexican flag in a trunk with his official papers for safe keeping, so without opposition General Montgomery marched with seventy men accompanied by fife and drum from the waterfront to the Plaza, and raised the Stars and Stripes on the vacant flag pole.  Thus the country came into the possession of the Americans and our historic pilgrimage is at an end,” I concluded, rising.

But my companion seemed loath to leave the place.  We sauntered by dark-eyed Italian girls lolling on the benches, shaggy bearded old sailors, whose scarred faces told of fierce battles with the elements, and stopped to examine the plaster casts presented for our inspection by a weary-eyed street vender.  At a distance, a laughing gypsy girl in a white waist and much beruffled red plaid skirt was enticing the crowd to cross her hand with silver that she might tell their fortunes.

“What need have we for gypsies?” he demanded pulling me down on a bench.  “I’ll, read your palm.”

“Can you tell fortunes?” I questioned as I drew off my glove.

“I can tell yours,” he declared straightening out my fingers in his big strong hand, and examining the lines.

“He’s a tall dark man, wearing glasses—­”

Instinctively I looked up into the uncovered brown eyes, then dropped mine in confusion as I met his laughing gaze.

“Only when he reads,” added the Bostonian, holding on to my fingers, as I tried to withdraw my hand.

An angry voice broke the silence and we sprang to our feet to see an old man shaking his fist in the face of a young Irish policeman.

“You let me alone!” he shouted.  “You let me alone!”

For a moment the officer hesitated.  Then he seized the old man by the collar.  “Come along quietly!  There ain’t no use making a howl.  There’s a vagrancy law in this city and I’ll show you it ain’t to be sniffed at.  I’ve been watching you ever since I’ve been on this beat and you ain’t done nothing but sit around this Plaza.”

“And ain’t I a right to sit ’round this Plaza?” The man pulled himself free and again defied the officer of the law with a clenched fist.  “Didn’t I help make it?  When you were playing with a rattle in your crib over in Dublin, I was a-stringing up a man to the eaves of the old Custom House over there on the corner.  And now you try to arrest me—­me a Vigilante of ’51—­” His fury choked him, and with a quick turn of the hand, the officer again had him by the collar.  But the old man wrenched himself loose.

“You keep your hands off me.”  He raised his angry voice in warning.  Then drawing a bundle of papers from his pocket he thrust them into the officer’s face.  “Look at that—­and that—­and that—­biggest business blocks in San Francisco.  If I choose to wear a loose shirt and sit ’round the Plaza it isn’t any business of yours.  In the good old days of forty-nine—­”