me your courage, and dismiss your care;
An hour will come with pleasure to relate
Your sorrows past, as benefits of Fate."

The Senora was already dressed. She turned with a face full of fear and
anger to her daughters as they entered her room--

"These American diablos! They are attacking the city. They will take
it--that is to be expected--who can fight diablos? And what is to become
of us? Oh, Antonia! Why did you prevent Fray Ignatius? We might now have
been safe in the convent", and Rachela nodded her head in assent, with
an insufferable air of reproof and toleration.

Antonia saw that the time had not yet come for pleading her own cause.
She left Isabel with her mother. The Senora's breakfast was waiting,
and she offered to share it with her youngest daughter. Antonia went
downstairs to prepare for herself some coffee. She was surprised and
pleased to find it made. For a certain thought had come to Molly in the
night and she had acted upon it--

"The praist is a strange praist, and almost as black as a nagur; and I'd
be a poor body, I think, to let him be meddling wid my work. Shure,
I never heard of the like of such interfering in Ireland, nor in the
States at all!" Then turning to the Mexican cook, Manuel--"You may lave
the fire alone till I bees done wid it."

"Fray Ignatius will not give you absolution if you disobey him."

"He can be kaping the same then. There is an Irish praist at San
Patricio, and I'll be going there for my absolution; and I'll be getting
none any nearer that an Irish soul will be a pin the better for. I'll
say that, standing in the church, to the saints themselves; and so be
aff wid you and let the fire alone till I bees done wid it."

But it was not Molly's place to serve the food she cooked, and she did
not trouble herself about the serving. When she had asserted her right
to control her own work, and do it or neglect it as it seemed good to
herself alone, she was satisfied. Over Antonia--who was at least half
a Mexican--she acknowledged a Mexican priest to have authority; and she
had no intention of interfering between Fray Ignatius and his lawful
flock. She was smoking her pipe by the fire when Antonia entered the
kitchen, and she neither lifted her eyes nor spoke to her.

Against such unreasonable isolation Antonia could not help a feeling of
anger; and she heard with satisfaction the regular crack of the rifles.
Her thought was--"They will make these peop