ONE year, and a half of another year, had passed. Sheep-shearings and vintages had been in San Pasquale; and Alessandro's new house, having been beaten on by the heavy spring rains, looked no longer new. It stood on the south side of the valley,—too far, Ramona felt, from the blessed bell; but there had not been land enough for wheat-fields any nearer, and she could see the , and the posts, and, on a clear day, the bell itself. The house was small. “Small to hold so much joy,” she said, when Alessandro first led her to it, and said, deprecatingly, “It is small, Majella,—too small;” and he bitterly, as he , the size of Ramona's own room at the Senora's house. “Too small,” he repeated.  
“Very small to hold so much joy, my Alessandro,” she laughed; “but quite large enough to hold two persons.”
 
It looked like a palace to the San Pasquale people, after Ramona had arranged their little possessions in it; and she herself felt rich as she looked around her two small rooms. The old San Luis Rey chairs and the raw-hide bedstead were there, and, most precious of all, the statuette of the Madonna. For this Alessandro had built a in the wall, between the head of the bed and the one window. The niche was deep enough to hold small pots in front of the statuette; and Ramona kept constantly growing there wild-cucumber plants, which wreathed and re-wreathed the niche till it looked like a . Below it hung her gold rosary and the ivory Christ; and many a woman of the village, when she came to see Ramona, asked permission to go into the bedroom and say her prayers there; so that it finally came to be a sort of for the whole village.
 
A broad , as broad as the Senora's, ran across the front of the little house. This was the only thing for which Ramona had asked. She could not quite fancy life without a veranda, and linnets in the . But the linnets had not yet come. In vain Ramona food for them, and laid little trains of to them inside the posts; they would not build nests inside. It was not their way in San Pasquale. They lived in the canons, but this part of the valley was too bare of trees for them. “In a year or two more, when we have , they will come,” Alessandro said.
 
With the money from that first sheep-shearing, and from the sale of part of his cattle, Alessandro had bought all he needed in the way of farming implements,—a good and harnesses, and a plough. Baba and Benito, at first and indignant, soon made up their minds to work. Ramona had talked to Baba about it as she would have talked to a brother. In fact, except for Ramona's help, it would have been a question whether even Alessandro could have made Baba work in harness. “Good Baba!” Ramona said, as she slipped piece after piece of the harness over his neck,—“Good Baba, you must help us; we have so much work to do, and you are so strong! Good Baba, do you love me?” and with one hand in his mane, and her cheek, every few steps, laid close to his, she led Baba up and down the first he ploughed.
 
“My Senorita!” thought Alessandro to himself, half in pain, half in pride, as, running behind with the jerked plough, he watched her laughing face and blowing hair,—“my Senorita!”
 
But Ramona would not run with her hand in Baba's mane this winter. There was a new work for her, indoors. In a cradle, which Alessandro had made, under her directions, of the woven , like the great outdoor acorn-granaries, only closer woven, and of an oval shape, and lifted from the floor by four uprights of red manzanita stems,—in this cradle, on soft white wool fleeces, covered with white homespun blankets, lay Ramona's baby, six months old, lusty, strong, and beautiful, as only children born of great love and under healthful conditions can be. This child was a girl, to Alessandro's delight; to Ramona's regret,—so far as a loving mother can feel regret connected with her firstborn. Ramona had wished for an Alessandro; but the disappointed wish faded out of her thoughts, hour by hour, as she gazed into her baby-girl's blue eyes,—eyes so blue that their color was the first thing noticed by each person who looked at her.
 
“Eyes of the sky,” exclaimed Ysidro, when he first saw her.
 
“Like the mother's,” said Alessandro; on which Ysidro turned an astonished look upon Ramona, and saw for the first time that her eyes, too, were blue.
 
“Wonderful!” he said. “It is so. I never saw it;” and he wondered in his heart what father it had been, who had given eyes like those to one born of an Indian mother.
 
“Eyes of the sky,” became at once the baby's name in the village; and Alessandro and Ramona, before they knew it, had fallen into the way of so calling her. But when it came to the christening, they . The news was brought to the village, one Saturday, that Father Gaspara would hold services in the valley the next day, and that he wished all the new-born babes to be brought for christening. Late into the night, Alessandro and Ramona sat by their sleeping baby and discussed what should be her name. Ramona wondered that Alessandro did not wish to name her Majella.
 
“No! Never but one Majella,” he said, in a tone which gave Ramona a sense of vague fear, it was so solemn.
 
They discussed “Ramona,” “Isabella.” Alessandro suggested Carmena. This had been his mother's name.
 
At the mention of it Ramona , the scene in the Temecula . “Oh, no, no! Not that!” she cried. “It is ill-fated;” and Alessandro blamed himself for having forgotten her only association with the name.
 
At last Alessandro said: “The people have named her, I think, Majella. Whatever name we give her in the chapel, she will never be called anything but 'Eyes of the Sky,' in the village.”
 
“Let that name be her true one, then,” said Ramona. And so it was settled; and when Father Gaspara took the little one in his arms, and made the sign of the cross on her brow, he pronounced with some difficulty the of the Indian name, which meant “Blue Eyes,” or “Eyes of the Sky.”
 
Heretofore, when Father Gaspara had come to San Pasquale to say mass, he had slept at Lomax's, the store and post-office, six miles away, in the Bernardo valley. But Ysidro, with great pride, had this time ridden to meet him, to say that his cousin Alessandro, who had come to live in the valley, and had a good new house, begged that the Father would do him the honor to stay with him.
 
“And indeed, Father,” added Ysidro, “you will be far better and fed than in the house of Lomax. My cousin's wife knows well how all should be done.”
 
“Alessandro! Alessandro!” said the Father, . “Has he been long married?”
 
“No, Father,” answered Ysidro. “But little more than two years. They were married by you, on their way from Temecula here.”
 
“Ay, ay. I remember,” said Father Gaspara. “I will come;” and it was with no small interest that he looked forward to meeting again the couple that had so strongly impressed him.
 
Ramona was full of eager interest in her preparations for entertaining the priest. This was like the olden time; and as she busied herself with her cooking and other arrangements, the thought of Father Salvierderra was much in her mind. She could, perhaps, hear news of him from Father Gaspara. It was she who had suggested the idea to Alessandro; and when he said, “But where will you sleep yourself, with the child, Majella, if we give our room to the Father? I can lie on the floor outside; but you?”—“I will go to Ysidro's, and sleep with Juana,” she replied. “For two nights, it is no matter; and it is such shame to have the Father sleep in the house of an American, when we have a good bed like this!”
 
Seldom in his life had Alessandro experienced such a sense of gratification as he did when he led Father Gaspara into his and Ramona's bedroom. The clean walls, the bed made, with broad lace on sheets and pillows, hung with curtains and a of bright red calico, the old carved chairs, the Madonna shrine in its bower of green leaves, the shelves on the walls, the white-curtained window,—all made up a picture such as Father Gaspara had never before seen in his pilgrimages among the Indian villages. He could not restrain an ejaculation of surprise. Then his eye falling on the golden rosary, he exclaimed, “Where got you that?”
 
“It is my wife's,” replied Alessandro, proudly. “It was given to her by Father Salvierderra.”
 
“Ah!” said the Father. “He died the other day.”
 
“Dead! Father Salvierderra dead!” cried Alessandro. “That will be a terrible blow. Oh, Father, I you not to speak of it in her presence. She must not know it till after the christening. It will make her heart heavy, so that she will have no joy.”
 
Father Gaspara was still the rosary and crucifix. “To be sure, to be sure,” he said absently; “I will say nothing of it; but this is a work of art, this crucifix; do you know what you have here? And this,—is this not an altar-cloth?” he added, lifting up the beautiful altar-cloth, which Ramona, in honor of his coming, had pinned on the wall below the Madonna's shrine.
 
“Yes, Father, it was made for that. My wife made it. It was to be a present to Father Salvierderra; but she has not seen him, to give it to him. It will take the light out of the sun for her, when first she hears that he is dead.”
 
Father Gaspara was about to ask another question, when Ramona appeared in the , flushed with running. She had carried the baby over to Juana's and left her there, that she might be free to serve the Father's supper.
 
“I pray you tell her not,” said Alessandro, under his breath; but it was too late. Seeing the Father with her rosary in his hand, Ramona exclaimed:—
 
“That, Father, is my most sacred possession. It once belonged to Father Peyri, of San Luis Rey, and he gave it to Father Salvierderra, who gave it to me, Know you Father Salvierderra? I was hoping to hear news of him through you.”
 
“Yes, I knew him,—not very well; it is long since I saw him,” Father Gaspara. His hesitancy alone would not have told Ramona the truth; she would have set that down to the priest's , or , to the Franciscan order; but looking at Alessandro, she saw terror and sadness on his face. No shadow there ever escaped her eye. “What is it, Alessandro?” she exclaimed. “Is it something about Father Salvierderra? Is he ill?”
 
Alessandro shook his head. He did not know what to say. Looking from one to the other, seeing the confused pain in both their faces, Ramona, laying both her hands on her breast, in the gesture she had learned from the Indian women, cried out in a piteous tone: “You will not tell me! You do not speak! Then he is dead!” and she sank on her knees.
 
“Yes, my daughter, he is dead,” said Father Gaspara, more tenderly than that brusque and warlike priest often spoke. “He died a month ago, at Santa Barbara. I am grieved to have brought you tidings to give you such sorrow. But you must not mourn for him. He was very feeble, and he longed to die, I heard. He could no longer work, and he did not wish to live.”
 
Ramona had buried her face in her hands. The Father's words were only a confused sound in her ears. She had heard nothing after the words, “a month ago.” She remained silent and motionless for some moments; then rising, without speaking a word, or looking at either of the men, she crossed the room and knelt down before the Madonna. By a common impulse, both Alessandro and Father Gaspara silently left the room. As they stood together outside the door, the Father said, “I would go back to Lomax's if it were not so late. I like not to be here when your wife is in such grief.”
 
“That would but be another grief, Father,” said Alessandro. “She has been full of happiness in making ready for you. She is very strong of soul. It is she who makes me strong often, and not I who give strength to her.”
 
“My faith, but the man is right,” thought Father Gaspara, a half-hour later, when, with a calm face, Ramona summoned them to supper. He did not know, as Alessandro did, how that face had changed in the half-hour. It wore a look Alessandro had never seen upon it. Almost he to speak to her.
 
When he walked by her side, later in the evening, as she went across the valley to Fernando's house, he ventured to mention Father Salvierderra's name. Ramona laid her hand on his lips. “I cannot talk about him yet, dear,” she said. “I never believed that he would die without giving us his . Do not speak of him till to-morrow is over.”
 
Ramona's saddened face on all the women's hearts as they met her the next morning. One by one they gazed, astonished, then turned away, and spoke softly among themselves. They all loved her, and half her too, for her great kindness, and readiness to teach and to help them. She had been like a sort of in the valley ever since she came, and no one had ever seen her face without a smile. Now she smiled not. Yet there was the beautiful baby in its white dress, ready to be christened; and the sun shone, and the bell had been ringing for half an hour, and from every corner of the valley the people were , and Father Gaspara, in his gold and green cassock, was praying before the altar; it was a day in San Pasquale. Why did Alessandro and Ramona kneel apart in a corner, with such heart-stricken , not even looking glad when their baby laughed, and reached up her hands? Gradually it was whispered about what had happened. Some one had got it from Antonio, of Temecula, Alessandro's friend. Then all the women's faces grew sad too. They all had heard of Father Salvierderra, and many of them had prayed to the ivory Christ in Ramona's room, and knew that he had given it to her.
 
As Ramona passed out of the chapel, some of them came up to her, and taking her hand in theirs, laid it on their hearts, speaking no word. The gesture was more than any speech could have been.
 
When Father Gaspara was taking leave, Ramona said, with quivering lips, “Father, if there is anything you know of Father Salvierderra's last hours, I would be grateful to you for telling me.”
 
“I heard very little,” replied the Father, “except that he had been feeble for some weeks; yet he would persist in spending most of the night kneeling on the stone floor in the church, praying.”
 
“Yes,” interrupted Ramona; “that he always did.”
 
“And the last morning,” continued the Father, “the Brothers found him there, still kneeling on the stone floor, but quite powerless to move; and they lifted him, and carried him to his room, and there they found, to their horror, that he had had no bed; he had lain on the stones; and then they took him to the Superior's own room, and laid him in the bed, and he did not speak any more, and at noon he died.”
 
“Thank you very much, Father,” said Ramona, without lifting her eyes from the ground; and in the same low, tremulous tone, “I am glad that I know that he is dead.”
 
“Strange what a hold those Franciscans got on these Indians!” Father Gaspara, as he rode down the valley. “There's none of them would look like that if I were dead, I warrant me! There,” he exclaimed, “I meant to have asked Alessandro who this wife of his is! I don't believe she is a Temecula Indian. Next time I come, I will find out. She's had some somewhere, that's plain. She's quite superior to the general run of them. Next time I come, I will find out about her.”
 
“Next time!” In what calendar are kept the records of those next times which never come? Long before Father Gaspara visited San Pasquale again, Alessandro and Ramona were far away, and strangers were living in their home.
 
It seemed to Ramona in after years, as she looked back over this life, that the news of Father Salvierderra's death was the first note of the of their happiness. It was but a few days , when Alessandro came in one noon with an expression on his face that terrified her; seating himself in a chair, he buried his face in his hands, and would neither look up nor speak; not until Ramona was near crying from his silence, did he utter a word. Then, looking at her with a ghastly face, he said in a hollow voice, “It has begun!” and buried his face again. Finally Ramona's tears from him the following story:
 
Ysidro, it seemed, had the previous year rented a canon, at the head of the valley, to one Doctor Morong. It was simply as bee-pasture that the Doctor wanted it, he said. He put his hives there, and built a sort of hut for the man whom he sent up to look after the honey. Ysidro did not need the land, and thought it a good chance to make a little money. He had taken every precaution to make the transaction a safe one; had gone to San Diego, and got Father Gaspara to act as interpreter for him, in the interview with Morong; it had been a written agreement, and the rent agreed upon had been punctually paid. Now, the time of the lease having expired, Ysidro had been to San Diego to ask the Doctor if he wished to renew it for another year; and the Doctor had said that the land was his, and he was coming out there to build a house, and live.
 
Ysidro had gone to Father Gaspara for help, and Father Gaspara had had an angry interview with Doctor Morong; but it had done no good. The Doctor said the land did not belong to Ysidro at all, but to the United States Government; and that he had paid the money for it to the agents in Los Angeles, and there would very soon come papers from Washington, to show that it was his. Father Gaspara had gone with Ysidro to a lawyer in San Diego, and had shown to his lawyer Ysidro's paper,—the old one from the Mexican Governor of California, establishing the of San Pasquale, and saying how many leagues of land the Indians were to have; but the lawyer had only laughed at Father Gaspara for believing that such a paper as that was good for anything. He said that was all very well when the country belonged to Mexico, but it was no good now; that the Americans owned it now; and everything was done by the American law now, not by the Mexican law any more.
 
“Then we do not own any land in San Pasquale at all,” said Ysidro. “Is that what it means?”
 
And the lawyer had said, he did not know how it would be with the cultivated land, and the village where the houses were,—he could not tell about that; but he thought it all belonged to the men at Washington.
 
Father Gaspara was in such rage, Ysidro said, that he tore open his gown on his breast, and he smote himself, and he said he wished he were a soldier, and no priest, that he might fight this accursed United States Government; and the lawyer laughed at him, and told him to look after souls,—that was his business,—and let the Indian beggars alone! “Yes, that was what he said,—'the Indian beggars!' and so they would be all beggars, presently.”
 
Alessandro told this by , as it were; at long . His voice was choked; his whole frame shook. He was nearly beside himself with rage and despair.
 
“You see, it is as I said, Majella. There is no place safe. We can do nothing! We might better be dead!”
 
“It is a long way off, that canon Doctor Morong had,” said Ramona, piteously. “It wouldn't do any harm, his living there, if no more came.”
 
“Majella talks like a dove, and not like a woman,” said Alessandro, fiercely. “Will there be one to come, and not two? It is the beginning. To-morrow may come ten more, with papers to show that the land is theirs. We can do nothing, any more than the wild beasts. They are better than ............