seclusion, though
unlike the habits of his countrymen, did not affect them. The shopkeeper
and innkeeper saluted him always with a profound courtesy which awakened
his slight resentment, partly because he was conscious that it was
grateful to him, and partly that he felt he ought to have provoked in
them a less satisfied condition.

Once, when he had unwittingly passed the confines of his own garden,
through a gap in the Mission orchard, a lissome, black-coated shadow
slipped past him with an obeisance so profound and gentle that he was
startled at first into an awkward imitation of it himself, and then into
an angry self-examination. He knew that he loathed that long-skirted,
womanlike garment, that dangling, ostentatious symbol, that air of
secrecy and mystery, and he inflated his chest above his loosely tied
cravat and unbuttoned waistcoat with a contrasted sense of freedom. But
he was conscious the next day of weakly avoiding a recurrence of this
meeting, and in his self-examination put it down to his self-disciplined
observance of his doctor's orders. But when he was strong again, and
fitted for his Master's work, how strenuously he should improve the
occasion this gave him of attacking the Scarlet Woman among her slaves
and worshipers!

His afternoon meditations and the perusal of his only book--the
Bible--were regularly broken in upon at about sunset by two or three
strokes from the cracked bell that hung in the open belfry which reared
itself beyond the gnarled pear tees. He could not say that it was
aggressive or persistent, like his own church bells, nor that it
even expressed to him any religious sentiment. Moreover, it was not a
"Sabbath" bell, but a DAILY one, and even then seemed to be only a signal
to ears easily responsive, rather than a stern reminder. And the hour
was always a singularly witching one.

It was when the sun had slipped from the glaring red roofs, and the
yellowing adobe of the Mission walls and the tall ranks of wild oats
on the hillside were all of the one color of old gold. It was when the
quivering heat of the arroyo and dusty expanse of plaza was blending
with the soft breath of the sea fog that crept through the clefts of the
coast range, until a refreshing balm seemed to fall like a benediction
on all nature. It was when the trade-wind-swept and irritated surfaces
of the rocky gorge beyond were soothed with clinging vapors; when the
pines above no longer rocked monotonously, and