“Ah! it is like these Americanos,” responded the muleteer.  “I have it from my brother Diego that he went from San Jose to Pescadero two months ago across the plains, with never a hut nor fonda to halt at all the way.  He returned in seven days, and in the midst of the plain there were three houses and a mill and many people.  And why was it?  Ah!  Mother of God! one had picked up in the creek where he drank that much of gold;” and the muleteer tapped one of the silver coins that fringed his jacket sleeves in place of buttons.

“And they are washing the sands for gold there now,” said Antonio, eagerly pointing to some men gathered round a machine like an enormous cradle.  “Let us hasten on.”

Father Pedro’s momentary interest had passed.  The words of his companions fell dull and meaningless upon his dreaming ears.  He was conscious only that the child was more a stranger to him as an outcome of this hard, bustling life, than when he believed her borne to him over the mysterious sea.  It perplexed his dazed, disturbed mind to think that if such an antagonistic element could exist within a dozen miles of the Mission, and he not know it, could not such an atmosphere have been around him, even in his monastic isolation, and he remain blind to it?  Had he really lived in the world without knowing it?  Had it been in his blood?  Had it impelled him to—­He shuddered and rode on.

They were at the last slope of the zigzag descent to the shore, when he saw the figures of a man and woman moving slowly through a field of wild oats, not far from the trail.  It seemed to his distorted fancy that the man was Cranch.  The woman!  His heart stopped beating.  Ah! could it be?  He had never seen her in her proper garb:  would she look like that?  Would she be as tall?  He thought he bade Jose and Antonio go on slowly before with Sanchicha, and dismounted, walking slowly between the high stalks of grain lest he should disturb them.  They evidently did not hear his approach, but were talking earnestly.  It seemed to Father Pedro that they had taken each other’s hands, and as he looked Cranch slipped his arm round her waist.  With only a blind instinct of some dreadful sacrilege in this act, Father Pedro would have rushed forward, when the girl’s voice struck his ear.  He stopped, breathless.  It was not Francisco, but Juanita, the little mestiza.

“But are you sure you are not pretending to love me now, as you pretended to think I was the muchacha you had run away with and lost?  Are you sure it is not pity for the deceit you practiced upon me—­upon Don Juan—­upon poor Father Pedro?”

It seemed as if Cranch had tried to answer with a kiss, for the girl drew suddenly away from him with a coquettish fling of the black braids, and whipped her little brown hands behind her.

“Well, look here,” said Cranch, with the same easy, good-natured, practical directness which the priest remembered, and which would have passed for philosophy in a more thoughtful man, “put it squarely, then.  In the first place, it was Don Juan and the alcalde who first suggested you might be the child.”