year when clouds have been so long absent from the skies as to be unreckoned in the affairs of men. The stars seemed drawn near to earth, spreading and contracting in their bright scintillation as if they panted at the barrier of space that held them back; Polaris was red close down upon the hills. Even a shred of moon is bright beyond the brightness of other moons in those serene autumn nights of California. This night the cold sphere seemed swollen with a passion of light. Gertrudis stood revealed in the shadow of Don Geronimo's wall.
She was dressed in white, like a bride. Her skirts, turned up above her knees as if she lifted them at a brookside, revealing her gleaming limbs, white as the sun-bleached linen of her spotless garb. She came with sudden resolution down the steps and stood on the pavement, assured by the silence around her, although she could see the Indians grouped along the arcade at the margin of the vineyard. There was something in their attitude of silent, sympathetic waiting that was like a sustaining hand.
Don Geronimo's house stood almost in the center of the arcade, there being something less than a hundred yards between his steps and the great door of the church. Ahead of Gertrudis the shadowy arcade stretched away broken by loops of moonlight; on one hand was the cart-track, white with dust; on the other, a little way ahead, the vineyard. In the courtyard behind her the water of the fountain could be heard plashing as it overflowed the rim of
