present at an important
ceremony.

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 st