“That’s all my fault, dear,” she said, suddenly entwining her arms round Mrs. Markham, and hiding her half embarrassed smile on the shoulder of her strong-minded friend; “they suggested it to me, and I half assented, to save you.  Please forgive me.”

“Don’t think I am blaming you, my dear Eleanor,” said Mrs. Markham.  “For Heaven’s sake assent to the wildest and most extravagant hypothesis they can offer, if it will leave us free to arrange our own plans for getting away.  I begin to think we were not a very harmonious party on the Excelsior, and most of our troubles here are owing to that.  We forget we have fallen among a lot of original saints, as guileless and as unsophisticated as our first parents, who know nothing of our customs and antecedents.  They have accepted us on what they believe to be our own showing.  From first to last we’ve underrated them, forgetting they are in the majority.  We can’t expect to correct the ignorance of fifty years in twenty-four hours, and I, for one, sha’n’t attempt it.  I’d much rather trust to the character those people would conceive of me from their own consciousness than to one Mrs. Brimmer or Mr. Winslow would give of me.  From this moment I’ve taken a firm resolve to leave my reputation and the reputation of my friends entirely in their hands.  If you are wise you will do the same.  They are inclined to worship you—­don’t hinder them.  My belief is, if we only take things quietly, we might find worse places to be stranded on than Todos Santos.  If Mrs. Brimmer and those men of ours, who, I dare say, have acted as silly as the Mexicans themselves, will only be quiet, we can have our own way here yet.”

“And poor Captain Bunker?” said Miss Keene.

“It seems hard to say it, but, in my opinion, he is better under lock and key, for everybody’s good, at present.  He’d be a firebrand in the town if he got away.  Meantime, let us go to our room.  It is about the time when everybody is taking a siesta, and for two hours, thank Heaven! we’re certain nothing more can happen.”

“I’ll join you in a moment,” said Miss Keene.

Her quick ear had caught the sound of voices approaching.  As Mrs. Markham disappeared in the passage, the Commander and his party reappeared from the guard-room, taking leave of Padre Esteban.  The secretary, as he passed Miss Keene, managed to add to his formal salutation the whispered words,—­“When the Angelus rings I will await you before the grating of his prison.”

Padre Esteban was too preoccupied to observe this incident.  As soon as he quitted the Presidio, he hastened to the Mission with a disquieting fear that his strange guest might have vanished.  But, crossing the silent refectory, and opening the door of the little apartment, he was relieved to find him stretched on the pallet in a profound slumber.  The peacefulness of the venerable walls had laid a gentle finger on his weary eyelids.

The Padre glanced round the little cell, and back again at the handsome suffering face that seemed to have found surcease and rest in the narrow walls, with a stirring of regret.  But the next moment he awakened the sleeper, and in the briefest, almost frigid, sentences, related the events of the morning.