e loveliest place in all
California.

As they walked slowly on Mrs. Burton recited in an undertone, and with
the emotional sweetness which had captivated countless audiences and
which never failed to thrill her sister:

"Up from the south slow filed a train,
Priests and soldiers of old Spain,
Who through the sunlit country wound
With cross and lance, intent to found
A mission in that wild to John,
Soldier saint of Capistran."

They stopped a moment as if to let the beauty sink deep, and then the
two women entered the gate of the old mission grounds.

Early in the afternoon the Sunrise Camp Fire party had arrived at the
little half-foreign town of Capistrano, set midway, like a link with the
past, between the two modern cities of San Diego and Los Angeles. For
hours they had been exploring the old mission. Then, after dinner, the
Camp Fire girls, with Dan and Billy Webster to act as escorts had asked
the privilege of returning to remain in the old mission garden until
bedtime.

Tonight, to Mrs. Burton's eyes at least, the mission looked like a
half-ruined palace of dreams. Once the mission of San Juan Capistrano
held a great stone church, a pillared court, a portico, a rectangle;
here the Franciscan fathers had their cells, and many rooms for
distinguished guests. It was the richest and most splendid mission in
old California.

But at present only the ruins of its past remained.

Above, in one of the crumbling arches of the colonnade, an owl hooted so
hoarsely that Mrs. Webster clutched her sister's arm in a tighter clasp.
The greeting had sounded, not like a welcome, but a warning.

There was no one to be seen and the place was wrapped in a kind of
ghostly silence.

"It is most extraordinary how the girls and Dan and Billy have
disappeared," Mrs. Burton whispered plaintively, scarcely daring to
speak in a natural tone.

She and Mrs. Burton had passed through one of the colonnades and were
now in the old court in the rear. Along one side ran a line of forsaken
cloisters.

"Wait a moment, Mollie, please," Mrs. Burton murmured.

Adding to the enchantment of the present scene she could hear again the
sound of music. The two musicians who had been singing on the veranda
across from their hotel also must have wandered into the mission
grounds.

Then, almost at the same instant, Mrs. Burton and Mrs. Webster
discovered the Camp Fire girls.

Beyond the enclosed space of the old missi