things, Luis mio: this morning I invited the Russians to dance
to-night, and told Padre Abella to ask all our neighbors of the Mission
besides; and Rafaella Sal helped me to drape every one of those flags.
When I told her you might tear them down, she vowed that if you did she
would dance all night with the Bostonian."

Luis lifted his shoulders and mustache to express an attitude of
contemptuous resignation, but his face darkened, and a moment later he
left the room and strolled up the square to the grating of Rafaella Sal.

Concha well knew that the frank gray eyes of the Bostonian--all
citizens of the United States were Bostonians in that part of the
world, for only Boston skippers had the enterprise to venture so
far--were for no one but herself. But his face was bony and freckled,
and his figure less in height and vigor than her own. He was rich and
well-born, but shy and very modest. Concha Arguello, La Favorita of
California, was for some such dashing caballero as Don Antonio Castro
of Monterey, or Ignacio Sal, the most adventurous rider of the north.
Meanwhile he could look at her and adore her in secret, and Dona
Rafaella Sal was very kind and danced as well as himself. He never
dreamed that he was being used as a stalking horse to keep alive in the
best match in the Californias the jealous desire for exclusive
possession that had animated him in 1800 when he had applied through
the Viceroy of Mexico for royal consent to his marriage with the
Favorita of her year. That was six years ago and never a word had come
from Madrid. Luis was faithful, but men were men, and girls grew older
every day. So the wise Rafaella was alternately indifferent and
alluring, the object of more admiration than a maid could always repel,
yet with wells of sentiment that only one man could discover. And the
American was patient, and even had he known, would not in the least
have minded the use she made of him. He still could look at Concha
Arguello.

William Sturgis had sailed in one of his father's ships, now six years
ago, from Boston in search of health. The ship in a dense fog had gone
on the rocks in the straits between the Farallones and the Bay of San
Francisco. He alone, and after long hours of struggle with the wicked
currents, not even knowing in what direction land might be, was flung,
senseless, on the shore below the Fort. For the next month he was an
invalid in the house of the Commandante. Fortunately, his