“Sing something,” my companion suggested.  “It needs music to make the spell complete.”

“It does,” I assented, “but you must stay where you are,” and climbing to a balcony at the end of the building, I concealed myself in the shadow.

He glanced up at the first notes, then sat with bowed head.  I filled the old church with an Ave Maria, then another.  As I sang, the candles seemed to have been lighted on the gilded altars, and the brown friars and dusky Indians took form in the dim enclosure.

“More,” he urged, but I would not, for I feared that the spell might be broken.  So he came up to see why I lingered, and found me mounted on a ladder peering up at the old mission bells and the hand-hewn rafters tied with ropes of plaited rawhide.

My song must have attracted a passer-by, for a voice greeted us as we descended.

“Did you see the bells?” he asked eagerly.  “They’re a good deal like some of us old folks, out of commission because of age and disuse, but nevertheless they have their value.  One has lost its tongue, another is cracked and the third sags against the side wall, so they’re useless as church bells, but still they seem to speak of the days of the padres and the Indians.”

“Were there many Indians here?” questioned the Bostonian.

“Often more than a thousand.  I was born in the shadow of this building, in the year when the Mission was secularized, but my father knew it in its glory and used to tell me many stories about the good old padres.”

Seeing the interest in our faces, the dark eyes brightened and he patted the thick adobe wall affectionately.  “This church was only a small part of the Mission in those days.  The buildings formed an inner quadrangle and two sides of an outer one, all a beehive of industry.  There were the work rooms of the Indians, where blankets and cloth were woven; great vats for trying out tallow and curing hides, and also huge storehouses for grain and other foodstuffs, all built and cared for by the Indians.”

“Quite a change from their lazy roving life,” suggested the Easterner.

“Still the padres were not hard taskmasters,” insisted the stranger.  “The work lasted only from four to six hours a day and the evenings were devoted to games and dancing.  All were required to attend religious services, however, and at the sound of the Angelus, they gathered within these walls.  There was no sleeping through long prayers in those days,” he added with an amused smile, “for a swarthy disciple paced the aisles and with a long pointed stick aroused the nodding ones, or quieted the too hilarious spirits of the small boys.”

“A good example for some of our modern churches,” remarked my companion, as we followed our guide to the altar at the end of the chapel.  The light streaming through the mullioned window fell full upon the carved figure of a tonsured monk clad in a loose robe girdled with a cord.  “It is our father, St. Francis,” explained the old man.  “It was in accordance with his direct wish that this Mission was founded.”