come a filmy
tint of green, so light it was hardly more than a shadow on the gray.
The willows were vivid light green, and the orange groves dark and
glossy like laurel. The billowy hills on either side the valley were
covered with verdure and bloom,--myriads of low blossoming plants, so
close to the earth that their tints lapped and overlapped on each other,
and on the green of the grass, as feathers in fine plumage overlap each
other and blend into a changeful color.

The countless curves, hollows, and crests of the coast-hills in Southern
California heighten these chameleon effects of the spring verdure; they
are like nothing in nature except the glitter of a brilliant lizard in
the sun or the iridescent sheen of a peacock's neck.

Father Salvierderra paused many times to gaze at the beautiful picture.
Flowers were always dear to the Franciscans. Saint Francis himself
permitted all decorations which could be made of flowers. He classed
them with his brothers and sisters, the sun, moon, and stars,--all
members of the sacred choir praising God.

It was melancholy to see how, after each one of these pauses, each fresh
drinking in of the beauty of the landscape and the balmy air, the old
man resumed his slow pace, with a long sigh and his eyes cast down.
The fairer this beautiful land, the sadder to know it lost to the
Church,--alien hands reaping its fulness, establishing new customs,
new laws. All the way down the coast from Santa Barbara he had seen,
at every stopping-place, new tokens of the settling up of the
country,--farms opening, towns growing; the Americans pouring in, at
all points, to reap the advantages of their new possessions. It was
this which had made his journey heavy-hearted, and made him feel, in
approaching the Senora Moreno's, as if he were coming to one of the last
sure strongholds of the Catholic faith left in the country.

When he was within two miles of the house, he struck off from the
highway into a narrow path that he recollected led by a short-cut
through the hills, and saved nearly a third of the distance. It was
more than a year since he had trod this path, and as he found it growing
fainter and fainter, and more and more overgrown with the wild mustard,
he said to himself, "I think no one can have passed through here this
year."

As he proceeded he found the mustard thicker and thicker. The wild
mustard in Southern California is like that spoken of in the New
Testament, in the branc