gnation. But this was followed by another question so frankly
appalling to the hearer that he staggered to his feet.

"I'm Stephen Masterton--known of men as a circuit preacher, of the
Northern California district," he thundered--"and an enemy of the flesh
in all its forms."

"I beg your pardon," responded Dr. Duchesne, grimly, "but as you are
suffering from excessive and repeated excitation of the nervous system,
and the depression following prolonged artificial exaltation--it makes
little difference whether the cause be spiritual, as long as there is a
certain physical effect upon your BODY--which I believe you have brought
to me to cure. Now--as to diet? you look all wrong there.

"My food is of the simplest--I have no hankering for fleshpots,"
responded the patient.

"I suppose you call saleratus bread and salt pork and flapjacks SIMPLE?"
said the doctor, coolly; "they are COMMON enough, and if you were
working with your muscles instead of your nerves in that frame of yours
they might not hurt you; but you are suffering as much from eating more
than you can digest as the veriest gourmand. You must stop all that. Go
down to a quiet watering-place for two months." . . .

"I go to a watering-place?" interrupted Masterton; "to the haunt of the
idle, the frivolous and wanton--never!"

"Well, I'm not particular about a 'watering-place,'" said the doctor,
with a shrug, "although a little idleness and frivolity with different
food wouldn't hurt you--but you must go somewhere and change your habits
and mode of life COMPLETELY. I will find you some sleepy old Spanish
town in the southern country where you can rest and diet. If this is
distasteful to you," he continued, grimly, "you can always call it 'a
trial.'"

Stephen Masterton may have thought it so when, a week later, he found
himself issuing from a rocky gorge into a rough, badly paved, hilly
street, which seemed to be only a continuation of the mountain road
itself. It broadened suddenly into a square or plaza, flanked on each
side by an irregular row of yellowing adobe houses, with the inevitable
verandaed tienda in each corner, and the solitary, galleried fonda, with
a half-Moorish archway leading into an inner patio or courtyard in the
center.

The whole street stopped as usual at the very door of the Mission
church, a few hundred yards farther on, and under the shadow of the two
belfry towers at each angle of the facade, as if this were the ultima
thule o