AFTER leaving Father Gaspara's door, Alessandro and Ramona rode slowly through the now , and turned , on the river road, leaving the old Presidio walls on their right. The river was low, and they forded it without difficulty.  
“I have seen this river so high that there was no fording it for many days,” said Alessandro; “but that was in spring.”
 
“Then it is well we came not at that time,” said Ramona, “All the times have fallen out well for us, Alessandro,—the dark nights, and the streams low; but look! as I say it, there comes the moon!” and she to the fine threadlike arc of the new moon, just visible in the sky. “Not big enough to do us any harm, however,” she added. “But, dear Alessandro, do you not think we are safe now?”
 
“I know not, Majella, if ever we may be safe; but I hope so. I have been all day thinking I had gone foolish last night, when I told Mrs. Hartsel that I was on my way to San Pasquale. But if men should come there asking for us, she would understand, I think, and keep a still tongue. She would keep harm from us if she could.”
 
Their way from San Diego to San Pasquale lay at first along a high mesa, or table-land, covered with low growths; after some ten or twelve miles of this, they among , into a narrow valley,—the Poway valley. It was here that the Mexicans made one of their few efforts to the American forces.
 
“Here were some Americans killed, in a fight with the Mexicans, Majella,” said Alessandro. “I myself have a dozen bullets which I picked up in the ground about here. Many a time I have looked at them and thought if there should come another war against the Americans, I would fire them again, if I could. Does Senor Felipe think there is any likelihood that his people will rise against them any more? If they would, they would have all the Indians to help them, now. It would be a mercy if they might be driven out of the land, Majella.”
 
“Yes,” sighed Majella. “But there is no hope. I have heard the Senora speak of it with Felipe. There is no hope. They have power, and great riches, she said. Money is all that they think of. To get money, they will commit any crime, even murder. Every day there comes the news of their murdering each other for gold. Mexicans kill each other only for hate, Alessandro,—for hate, or in anger; never for gold.”
 
“Indians, also,” replied Alessandro. “Never one Indian killed another, yet, for money. It is for , always. For money! Bah! Majella, they are dogs!”
 
Rarely did Alessandro speak with such ; but this last on his people had in his a fire of scorn and which would never die out. Trust in an American was henceforth to him impossible. The name was a for fraud and cruelty.
 
“They cannot all be so bad, I think, Alessandro,” said Ramona. “There must be some that are honest; do you not think so?”
 
“Where are they, then,” he cried fiercely,—“the ones who are good? Among my people there are always some that are bad; but they are in disgrace. My father punished them, the whole people punished them. If there are Americans who are good, who will not cheat and kill, why do they not send after these robbers and punish them? And how is it that they make laws which cheat? It was the American law which took Temecula away from us, and gave it to those men! The law was on the side of the thieves. No, Majella, it is a people that steals! That is their name,—a people that steals, and that kills for money. Is not that a good name for a great people to bear, when they are like the sands in the sea, they are so many?”
 
“That is what the Senora says,” answered Ramona. “She says they are all thieves; that she knows not, each day, but that on the next will come more of them, with new laws, to take away more of her land. She had once more than twice what she has now, Alessandro.”
 
“Yes,” he replied; “I know it. My father has told me. He was with Father Peyri at the place, when General Moreno was alive. Then all was his to the sea,—all that land we rode over the second night, Majella.”
 
“Yes,” she said, “all to the sea! That is what the Senora is ever saying: 'To the sea!' Oh, the beautiful sea! Can we it from San Pasquale, Alessandro?”
 
“No, my Majella, it is too far. San Pasquale is in the valley; it has hills all around it like walls. But it is good. Majella will love it; and I will build a house, Majella. All the people will help me. That is the way with our people. In two days it will be done. But it will be a poor place for my Majella,” he said sadly. Alessandro's heart was ill at ease. Truly a strange bride's journey was this; but Ramona felt no fear.
 
“No place can be so poor that I do not choose it, if you are there, rather than the most beautiful place in the world where you are not, Alessandro,” she said.
 
“But my Majella loves things that are beautiful,” said Alessandro. “She has lived like a queen.”
 
“Oh, Alessandro,” merrily laughed Ramona, “how little you know of the way queens live! Nothing was fine at the Senora Moreno's, only comfortable; and any house you will build, I can make as comfortable as that was; it is nothing but trouble to have one so large as the Senora's. Margarita used to be tired to death, all those rooms in which nobody lived except the blessed old San Luis Rey saints. Alessandro, if we could have had just one statue, either Saint Francis or the Madonna, to bring back to our house! That is what I would like better than all other things in the world. It is beautiful to sleep with the Madonna close to your bed. She speaks often to you in dreams.”
 
Alessandro serious, questioning eyes on Ramona as she uttered these words. When she like this, he felt indeed as if a being of some other sphere had come to dwell by his side. “I cannot find how to feel towards the saints as you do, my Majella,” he said. “I am afraid of them. It must be because they love you, and do not love us. That is what I believe, Majella. I believe they are with us, and no longer make mention of us in heaven. That is what the Fathers taught that the saints were ever doing,—praying to God for us, and to the and Jesus. It is not possible, you see, that they could have been praying for us, and yet such things have happened, as happened in Temecula. I do not know how it is my people have displeased them.”
 
“I think Father Salvierderra would say that it is a sin to be afraid of the saints, Alessandro,” replied Ramona, earnestly. “He has often told me that it was a sin to be unhappy; and that me many times from being wretched because the Senora would not love me. And, Alessandro,” she went on, growing more and more in tone, “even if nothing but misfortune comes to people, that does not prove that the saints do not love them; for when the saints were on earth themselves, look what they suffered: they were, almost all of them. Look at what holy Saint Catharine endured, and the blessed Saint Agnes. It is not by what happens to us here in this world that we can tell if the saints love us, or if we will see the Blessed Virgin.”
 
“How can we tell, then?” he asked.
 
“By what we feel in our hearts, Alessandro,” she replied; “just as I knew all the time, when you did not come,—I knew that you loved me. I knew that in my heart; and I shall always know it, no matter what happens. If you are dead, I shall know that you love me. And you,—you will know that I love you, the same.”
 
“Yes,” said Alessandro, reflectively, “that is true. But, Majella, it is not possible to have the same thoughts about a saint as about a person that one has seen, and heard the voice, and touched the hand.”
 
“No, not quite,” said Ramona; “not quite, about a saint; but one can for the Blessed Virgin, Alessandro! I am sure of that. Her statue, in my room at the Senora's, has been always my mother. Ever since I was little I have told her all I did. It was she helped me to plan what I should bring away with us. She reminded me of many things I had forgotten, except for her.”
 
“Did you hear her speak?” said Alessandro, awe-stricken.
 
“Not exactly in words; but just the same as in words,” replied Ramona, confidently. “You see when you sleep in the room with her, it is very different from what it is if you only see her in a . Oh, I could never be very unhappy with her in my room!”
 
“I would almost go and steal it for you, Majella,” cried Alessandro, with sacrilegious warmth.
 
“Holy Virgin!” cried Ramona, “never speak such a word. You would be struck dead if you laid your hand on her! I fear even the thought was a sin.”
 
“There was a small figure of her in the wall of our house,” said Alessandro. “It was from San Luis Rey. I do not know what became of it,—if it were left behind, or if they took it with my father's things to Pachanga. I did not see it there. When I go again, I will look.”
 
“Again!” cried Ramona. “What say you? You go again to Pachanga? You will not leave me, Alessandro?”
 
At the bare mention of Alessandro's leaving her, Ramona's courage always vanished. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, she was transformed from the dauntless, confident, sunny woman, who bore him up as it were on wings of hope and faith, to a timid, shrinking, child, crying out in alarm, and clinging to the hand.
 
“After a time, dear Majella, when you are wonted to the place, I must go, to fetch the and the few things that were ours. There is the raw-hide bed which was Father Peyri's, and he gave to my father. Majella will like to lie on that. My father believed it had great .”
 
“Like that you made for Felipe?” she asked.
 
“Yes; but it is not so large. In those days the cattle were not so large as they are now: this is not so broad as Senor Felipe's. There are chairs, too, from the Mission, three of them, one almost as fine as those on your at home. They were given to my father. And music-books,—beautiful parchment books! Oh, I hope those are not lost, Majella! If Jose had lived, he would have looked after it all. But in the confusion, all the things belonging to the village were thrown into together, and no one knew where anything was. But all the people knew my father's chairs and the books of the music. If the Americans did not steal them, everything will be safe. My people do not steal. There was never but one thief in our village, and my father had him so whipped, he ran away and never came back. I heard he was living in San Jacinto, and was a thief yet, spite of all that whipping he had. I think if it is in the blood to be a thief, not even whipping will take it out, Majella.”
 
“Like the Americans,” she said, half laughing, but with tears in the voice. “Whipping would not cure them.”
 
It wanted yet more than an hour of dawn when they reached the of the hill from which they looked down on the San Pasquale valley. Two such and valleys they had passed; this was the broadest of the three valleys, and the hills walling it were softer and rounder of contour than any they had yet seen. To the east and northeast lay ranges of high mountains, their tops lost in the clouds. The whole sky was and gray.
 
“If it were spring, this would mean rain,” said Alessandro; “but it cannot rain, I think, now.”
 
“No!” laughed Ramona, “not till we get our house done. Will it be of , Alessandro?”
 
“Dearest Majella, not yet! At first it must be of the tule. They are very comfortable while it is warm, and before winter I will build one of adobe.”
 
“Two houses! Alessandro! If the tule house is good, I shall not let you, Alessandro, build another.”
 
Ramona's mirthful moments bewildered Alessandro. To his slower and saddened nature they seemed preternatural; as if she were all of a sudden changed into a bird, or some gay creature outside the pale of human life,—outside and above it.
 
“You speak as the birds sing, my Majella,” he said slowly. “It was well to name you Majel; only the wood-dove has not joy in her voice, as you have. She says only that she loves and waits.”
 
“I say that, too, Alessandro!” replied Ramona, reaching out both her arms towards him.
 
The horses were walking slowly, and very close side by side. Baba and Benito were now such friends they liked to pace closely side by side; and Baba and Benito were by no means without recognitions of the sympathy between their riders. Already Benito knew Ramona's voice, and answered it with pleasure; and Baba had long ago learned to stop when his mistress laid her hand on Alessandro's shoulder. He stopped now, and it was long minutes before he had the signal to go on again.
 
“Majella! Majella!” cried Alessandro, as, grasping both her hands in his, he held them to his cheeks, to his neck, to his mouth, “if the saints would ask Alessandro to be a for Majella's sake, like those she was telling of, then she would know if Alessandro loved her! But what can Alessandro do now? What, oh, what? Majella gives all; Alessandro gives nothing!” and he bowed his forehead on her hands, before he put them back gently on Baba's neck.
 
Tears filled Ramona's eyes. How should she win this saddened man, this distrusting lover, to the joy which was his desert? “Alessandro can do one thing,” she said, insensibly falling into his mode of speaking,—“one thing for his Majella: never, never say that he has nothing to give her. When he says that, he makes Majella a ; for she has said that he is all the world to her,—he himself all the world which she desires. Is Majella a liar?”
 
But it was even now with an only half joy, the other half , that Alessandro replied: “Majella cannot lie. Majella is like the saints. Alessandro is hers.”
 
When they rode down into the valley, the whole village was astir. The vintage-time had nearly passed;............