their food. Juan remembered this as he stood viewing the fields abundant in the ripe and ripening crops. The Indians had advanced marvelously in two generations under the padres' hands.
There was a pleasant smell rising from the ground where the water spread between rows of growing cabbages and beets, as if it breathed the incense of its humble thanks for this blessing. With deft strokes of hoe and spade the Indians led little streams, which went crawling hungrily, eager in the way of water, whether it rushes in beneficence or roars in destruction. It left a little beading of foam on the ditch sides as it sank, the plants, growing on little ridges, leaning almost imperceptibly at the touch of it, as if they relaxed from the strain of waiting, famished in the ardent sun.
The greater part of the field within the strong adobe wall had been sown to grain, the stubble of which was still standing almost knee-high to a man, proof of the prodigious leavening that land contained. Juan calculated that the ripe grain must have been as high as the heads of the reapers who went to gather it with their primitive sickles andbind it into little sheaves no thicker than a man's thigh.
These sheaves were being carted to a circular enclosure over against that part of the wall nearest the mission buildings, whence there rose a confusion of dust and voices. Cattle were being driven around and around inside this fenced circle; Juan knew it was the threshing floor, where the grain was
