Amidst a silence so profound that Pilar heard the mingled music of the pines on the hills above the Presidio and of the distant ocean, Dona Brigida marched her to the very middle of the square, then by a dexterous turn of her wrist forced her to her knees.  With both hands she shook her daughter’s splendid silken hair from the tight rope into which she had coiled it, then stepped back for a moment that all might appreciate the penalty a woman must pay who disgraced her sex.  The breeze from the hills lifted the hair of Pilar, and it floated and wreathed upward for a moment—­a warm dusky cloud.

Suddenly the intense silence was broken by a loud universal hiss.  Pilar, thinking that it was part of her punishment, cowered lower, then, obeying some impulse, looked up, and saw the back of the young priest.  He was running.  As her dull gaze was about to fall again, it encountered for a moment the indignant blue eyes of a red-haired, hard-featured, but distinguished-looking young man, clad in sober gray.  She knew him to be the American, Malcolm Sturges, the guest of the Governor.  But her mind rapidly shed all impressions but the wretched horror of her own plight.  In another moment she felt the shears at her neck, and knew that her disgrace was passing into the annals of Monterey, and that half her beauty was falling from her.  Then she found herself seated on the horse in front of her mother, who encircled her waist with an arm that pressed her vitals like iron.  After that there was an interval of unconsciousness.

When she awoke, her first impulse was to raise her head from her mother’s bony shoulder, where it bumped uncomfortably.  Her listless brain slowly appreciated the fact that she was not on her way to the Rancho Diablo.  The mustang was slowly ascending a steep mountain trail.  But her head ached, and she dropped her face into her hands.  What mattered where she was going?  She was shorn, and disgraced, and disillusioned, and unspeakably weary of body and soul.

They travelled through dense forests of redwoods and pine, only the soft footfalls of the unshod mustang or the sudden cry of the wild-cat breaking the primeval silence.  It was night when Dona Brigida abruptly dismounted, dragging Pilar with her.  They were halfway up a rocky height, surrounded by towering peaks black with rigid trees.  Just in front of them was an opening in the ascending wall.  Beside it, with his hand on a huge stone, stood the vaquero.  Pilar knew that she had nothing to hope from him:  her mother had beaten him into submission long since.  Dona Brigida, without a word, drove Pilar into the cave, and she and the vaquero, exerting their great strength to the full, pushed the stone into the entrance.  There was a narrow rift at the top.  The cave was as black as a starless midnight.

Then Dona Brigida spoke for the first time:—­

“Once a week I shall come with food and drink.  There thou wilt stay until thy teeth fall, the skin bags from thy bones, and thou art so hideous that all men will run from thee.  Then thou canst come forth and go and live on the charity of the father to whom thou wouldst have taken a polluted priest.”