Would men of race, tempted by the loveliness of this great gold-haired houri sleeping on the Pacific, come from old and new Spain and dream away a life of pleasure?  What grapes would grow out of this rich soil to be crushed by Indian slaves into red wine!  And did gold vein those velvet hills?  How all fruits, all grains, would thrive! what superb beasts would fatten on the thick spring grass!  Ay! it was a magnificent discovery for the Church, and great would be the power that could wrest it from her.

There was a new people, somewhere north of Mexico, in the United States of America.  Would they ever covet and strive to rob?  The worse for them if they molested the fire-blooded Spaniard.  How he should like to fight them!

That night the sentinel gave a sudden piercing shout of warning, then dropped dead with a poisoned arrow in his brain.  Another moment, and the soldiers had leaped from their swinging beds of hide, and headed by their captain had reached the church they were there to defend.  Through plaza and corridors sped and shrieked the savage tribe, whose invasion had been made with the swiftness and cunning of their race.  The doors had not been hung in the church, and the naked figures ran in upon the heels of the soldiers, waving torches and yelling like the soulless fiends they were.  The few neophytes who retained spirit enough to fight after the bleaching process that had chilled their native fire and produced a result which was neither man nor beast, but a sort of barnyard fowl, hopped about under the weight of their blankets and were promptly despatched.

The brunt of the battle fell upon the small detachment of troops, and at the outset they were overwhelmed by numbers, dazzled by the glare of torches that waved and leaped in the cavern-like darkness of the church.  But they fought like Spaniards, hacking blindly with their swords, cleaving dusky skulls with furious maledictions, using their fists, their feet, their teeth—­wrenching torches from malignant hands and hurling them upon distorted faces.  Curses and wild yells intermingled.  De la Torre fought at the head of his men until men and savages, dead and living, were an indivisible mass, then thrust back and front, himself unhurt.  The only silent clear-brained man among them, he could reason as he assaulted and defended, and he knew that the Spaniards had little chance of victory—­and he less of looking again upon the treasures of Mexico.  The Indians swarmed like ants over the great nave and transept.  Those who were not fighting smashed the altar and slashed the walls.  The callous stars looked through the apertures left for windows, and shed a pallid light upon the writhing mass.  The padres had defended their altar, behind the chancel rail; they lay trampled, with arrows vibrating in their hard old muscles.

De la Torre forced his way to the door and stood for a moment, solitary, against the pale light of the open, then turned his face swiftly to the night air as he fell over the threshold of the mission he had so gallantly defended.