whispered
Andreo. "But, ay! the memory of that week on the mountain will keep us
both alive."

Padre Arroyo descended the stair and awaited them at its foot.
Separating them, and taking each by the hand, he pushed Andreo ahead and
dragged Pilar down the narrow passage. At its end he took a great bunch
of keys from his pocket, and raising both hands commanded them to kneel.
He said a long prayer in a loud monotonous voice which echoed and
reechoed down the dark hall and made Pilar shriek with terror. Then he
fairly hurled the marriage ceremony at them, and made the couple repeat
after him the responses. When it was over, "Arise," he said.

The poor things stumbled to their feet, and Andreo caught Pilar in a
last embrace.

"Now bear your incarceration with fortitude, my children; and if you do
not beat the air with your groans, I will let you out in a week. Do not
hate your old father, for love alone makes him severe, but pray, pray,
pray."

And then he locked them both in the same cell.

THE BELLS OF SAN GABRIEL

I

The Senor Capitan Don Luis de la Torre walked impatiently up and down
before the grist-mill wherein were quartered the soldiers sent by Mexico
to protect the building of the Mission of San Gabriel. The Indian
workmen were slugs; California, a vast region inhabited only by savages
and a few priests, offered slender attractions to a young officer
craving the gay pleasures of his capital and the presence of the woman
he was to marry. For months he had watched the mission church mount
slowly from foundation to towers, then spread into pillared corridors
and rooms for the clergy. He could have mapped in his mind every acre of
the wide beautiful valley girt by mountains snowed on their crest. He
had thought it all very lovely at first: the yellow atmosphere, the soft
abiding warmth, the blue reflecting lake; but the green on mountain and
flat had waxed to gold, then waned to tan and brown, and he was tired.
Not even a hostile Indian had come to be killed.

He was very good-looking, this tall young Spaniard, with his impatient
eyes and haughty intelligent face, and it is possible that the lady in
Mexico had added to his burden by doleful prayers to return. He took a
letter from his pocket, read it half through, then walked rapidly over
to the mission, seeking interest in the work of the Indians. Under the
keen merciless supervision of the padres,--the cleverest body of men
who ever set foot in Am