With the first rays of the morning light the fog lifted.  As the undraped hills one by one bared their cold bosoms to the sun, the long line of coast struggled back to life again.  Everything was unchanged, except that a stranded boat lay upon the sands, and in its stern sheets a sleeping child.

I.

The 10th of August, 1852, brought little change to the dull monotony of wind, fog, and treeless coast line.  Only the sea was occasionally flecked with racing sails that outstripped the old, slow-creeping trader, or was at times streaked and blurred with the trailing smoke of a steamer.  There were a few strange footprints on those virgin sands, and a fresh track, that led from the beach over the rounded hills, dropped into the bosky recesses of a hidden valley beyond the coast range.

It was here that the refectory windows of the Mission of San Carmel had for years looked upon the reverse of that monotonous picture presented to the sea.  It was here that the trade winds, shorn of their fury and strength in the heated, oven-like air that rose from the valley, lost their weary way in the tangled recesses of the wooded slopes, and breathed their last at the foot of the stone cross before the Mission.  It was on the crest of those slopes that the fog halted and walled in the sun-illumined plain below; it was in this plain that limitless fields of grain clothed the flat adobe soil; here the Mission garden smiled over its hedges of fruitful vines, and through the leaves of fig and gnarled pear trees; and it was here that Father Pedro had lived for fifty years, found the prospect good, and had smiled also.

Father Pedro’s smile was rare.  He was not a Las Casas, nor a Junipero Serra, but he had the deep seriousness of all disciples laden with the responsible wording of a gospel not their own.  And his smile had an ecclesiastical as well as a human significance, the pleasantest object in his prospect being the fair and curly head of his boy acolyte and chorister, Francisco, which appeared among the vines, and his sweetest pastoral music, the high soprano humming of a chant with which the boy accompanied his gardening.

Suddenly the acolyte’s chant changed to a cry of terror.  Running rapidly to Father Pedro’s side, he grasped his sotana, and even tried to hide his curls among its folds.

“’St! ’st!” said the Padre, disengaging himself with some impatience.  “What new alarm is this?  Is it Luzbel hiding among our Catalan vines, or one of those heathen Americanos from Monterey?  Speak!”

“Neither, holy father,” said the boy, the color struggling back into his pale cheeks, and an apologetic, bashful smile lighting his clear eyes.  “Neither; but oh! such a gross, lethargic toad!  And it almost leaped upon me.”

“A toad leaped upon thee!” repeated the good father with evident vexation.  “What next?  I tell thee, child, those foolish fears are most unmeet for thee, and must be overcome, if necessary, with prayer and penance.  Frightened by a toad!  Blood of the Martyrs!  ’T is like any foolish girl!”