itions.
But he answered her before she had time to speak.

"You love me, and would withdraw the conditions. But I am ready to do a
daring and a terrible act. Furthermore, I wish to show you that I can
succeed where all other men have failed. I ask only two things now.
First, make me the vow I wish."

"I swear it," she said.

"Now," he said, his voice sinking to a harsh but caressing whisper,
"give me one kiss for courage and hope."

She leaned slowly forward, the blood pulsing in her lips; but she had
been brought up behind grated windows, and she drew back. "No," she
said, "not now."

For a moment he looked rebellious; then he laid his hands on her
shoulders and pressed her to her knees. He knelt behind her, and
together they told a rosary for his safe return.

He left her there and went to his room. From his saddle-bag he took
a long letter from an intimate friend, one of the younger Franciscan
priests of the Mission of Santa Barbara, where he had been educated. He
sought this paragraph:--

"Thou knowest, of course, my Vicente, of the pearl fisheries of Baja
California. It is whispered--between ourselves, indeed, it is
quite true--that a short while ago the Indian divers discovered an
extravagantly rich bed of pearls. Instead of reporting to any of the
companies, they have hung them all upon our Most Sacred Lady of Loreto,
in the Mission of Loreto; and there, by the grace of God, they will
remain. They are worth the ransom of a king, my Vicente, and the Church
has come to her own again."

III

The fog lay thick on the bay at dawn next morning. The white waves hid
the blue, muffled the roar of the surf. Now and again a whale threw a
volume of spray high in the air, a geyser from a phantom sea. Above the
white sands straggled the white town, ghostly, prophetic.

De la Vega, a dark sombrero pulled over his eyes, a dark serape
enveloping his tall figure, rode, unattended and watchful, out of the
town. Not until he reached the narrow road through the brush forest
beyond did he give his horse rein. The indolence of the Californian was
no longer in his carriage; it looked alert and muscular; recklessness
accentuated the sternness of his face.

As he rode, the fog receded slowly. He left the chaparral and rode by
green marshes cut with sloughs and stained with vivid patches of
orange. The frogs in the tules chanted their hoarse matins. Through
brush-covered plains once more, with sparsely wooded hills in the