“Go on,” said the skeptic, leaning comfortably against a tree trunk.  “This old Mexican governor seems to have had an interesting romance.”

“He wasn’t old,” I protested, “only forty-six when he died.  He was a splendid type of a young Spanish grandee, tall and lithe of form, with the dark skin and hair of his race.  He combined the freedom born of an out-of-door life with the courtly manners inherited from generations of Spanish ancestry.  To Rafaela Sal, watching the soldiers file out of the mud-walled Presidio, it seemed that none sat his horse so straight nor so bravely as did Don Luis Argueello.  And at night to the young soldier dozing before the campfire in the forest, the billowy smoke seemed to shape itself into the soft folds of a lace mantilla from which looked out the smiling face of a lovely grey-eyed girl, framed in an exquisite mist of copper-colored hair.

“There was no opposition on the part of the parents to the union of these young people.  The elder Argueello loved the sweet Rafaela as if she were his own daughter, and Ensign Sal was proud to claim the splendid young soldier as a son-in-law.  So the betrothal was solemnized, but since Don Luis was a Spanish officer, the marriage must await the consent of the king, and forthwith papers were dispatched to the court of Madrid.  California was an isolated province in those days and the packet boat, touching on the shore but twice a year, frequently brought papers from Spain dated nine months previous, so the older people affirmed that permission could not be received for two years, while Luis and Rafaela declared that if the king answered at once—­and surely he would recognize the importance of haste—­word might be received in eighteen months.

“After a year and a half had passed the young people could talk of little besides the expected arrival of the boat with an order from the king.  Frequently Luis would climb the hills back of the Presidio where the wide expanse of the ocean could be seen.  At last a sail was discovered on the horizon and the little settlement was thrown into a turmoil of excitement.  Luis was first at the beach and impatiently watched the ship make its way between the high bluffs that guarded the entrance to the bay, and nose along the shore until it came to anchor in the little cove in front of the Presidio.  Had the king’s permission come? he eagerly asked his father, who was running through the papers handed him by the captain.  But the elder man shook his head, and Luis turned with lagging steps to tell Rafaela that they must wait another six months.  It seemed a long time to the impatient lovers and yet there was much to make the days pass quickly at the Presidio.  The door of the commodious sala at the home of the comandante always stood wide open, and almost nightly the feet of the young people which had danced since their babyhood tripped over the floor of the old adobe building.  Picnics were planned to the woods near the Mission and frequently longer excursions were undertaken; for El Camino Real was not only, the king’s highway to church and military outposts, but also the royal road to pleasure, and when a wedding or a fiesta was at the end of a journey, no distance was counted too great.  Luis watched his betrothed blossom to fuller beauty, fearful lest someone else might steal her away before word from the king should arrive.