vast chamber overhead. These men were as the dust that came ahead of the rising storm of change that Padre Ignacio knew in his heart soon would sweep the old order away in Alta California. But to a man who was younger, who had come after the trails were worn broad, the last adobe long since laid in the last mission walls, the last tile fixed, it did not signify so much. A younger man could bear it better, having no memories to be wrenched away.
Padre Ignacio had come down from his chamber only a little while before, to join in meat with Captain del Valle. The padre's room, spacious as the quarters of a king, and bare as if its occupants had deserted it and carried everything of value away, extended across the width of the mission building in the east end. It was floored with tiles, in which the feet of Padre Ignacio and those who had gone before him had worn little channels, or paths through the hard surface down to the softer core, which appeared tracings of duller red on the red-brown of the fire-baked adobe.
From door to altar, from altar to window, from window to the low, hard, austere couch, these little markings of sandaled feet were traced; and down the length of the room in its very center, the broadest and deepest line. Here Padre Ignacio wore down his troubles, spent his meditations, worked out the welfare of the hundreds, wild men and women but a little while before, who were gathered there under his hand.
A mighty cedar beam, the mark of the broadax in
