into his with the same high look that he had known before. If the painter had drawn the likeness from the face of the mother, he could have made no truer picture than lay in the face of the daughter. And if he had been seeking a model for the picture of a joyful, young angel, he need have looked no farther. His desires would have been all realized in that face.

For several moments Padre Vicente gazed into the locket before him. It had not been because he did not love Rafaela that he had left her. Nevertheless, he had left her, and he had had no word of her since. She had married, and this was her daughter. Did she love the man she had married? And was she yet alive? Padre Vicente was fifty-seven years old now, and a priest; but these questions came back to him as insistently as if he were young and a man of the world again. But the face before him held no answer.

After a time Padre Vicente rose and knelt before the Christ in the niche. He did not stir for many moments; but when he lifted his eyes again, peace shone in them. Gravely he picked up the picture, and shut first the golden cover, then the leather one. Opening the panelled door below the niche, he placed

the little case carefully inside and shut the door.

Men cannot give up their dreams once for all. Sometimes the pain of old sorrow comes back most insistently after years of peace. But Padre Vicente had not sacrificed his all for nothing.

"Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off."

Those words had been his consolation once; and like a flash they came back to him now.

"Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me," said the priest simply. Then he went out into the corridor. When he closed the door after him, his hand was as reverent as if the room behind him had been a holy place.

S

CHAPTER IX.

The King's Highway

PRING lingered late in San Juan valley

that year; and the first of May found

the hills still green, still redolent with the breath of flowers. Like the heavenly stream in the Patmos vision of Saint

John, the little river sparkled seaward past trees bearing all manner of fruit. The Mission orchards promised rich harvest of the padres' skill, and the hand of the spoiler had not touched them yet. Peace brooded over the valley-the peace of the sky's cloudless blue; the peace of the great, scarred sanctuary that watched over all. Peace.

To Miguel, galloping south on the King's Highway, there was no peace; but a mad, unreasoning joy that filled his whole being and brimmed over into the atmosphere about him. The bubbling note of the meadowlark in the wheat was not a bird's song to him; it was merely part of all the inexplicable delight about him. The green of fields, the splendor of flowers, the blue of heaven and the delicious caress of the spring air all said one thing to

him-be glad! The time, the place, all, everything about him, went to his head and made him drunk with the joy of spring and youth. For one wild, unreasoning interval, he forgot that Terrazzas lay asleep in the Mission graveyard; forgot that he was on his way to Mexico to become a priest; remembered only that the day was fine; that he was young and that he was riding on the King's Highway.

Between smiling fields the road stretched southward before him. His horse was good, and he was glad that the way was long. He wanted to ride on and on until he was tired. Red-gold poppies might burn on the hillsides, and all the fields be bright with the purple of Spanish lilies and the pale gold of pansies; but Miguel saw them all only as a blaze of color, snuffed their glorious fragrance only as a whiff of the delicious savor of living. If only for a moment, his dream had come true. He was mounted on a good, black horse; the jangle of harness and the creak of saddle leather were in his ears, and the breath of spring was in his nostrils. Out of the charmed distance, something rose up and beckoned to him. He saw it, and everything that was within him stood up to answer the call. He did not stop to think that he might never

reach what beckoned to him; in his present mood it was enough that his blood should tingle madly as he rode to meet what had called him since his childhood. And as he rode, the picture of Rafaela Montijo lay warm over his heart.

That morning Padre Vicente had showed Miguel the picture, and told him of the dying request of Terrazzas. He was to carry the little case with a letter of explanation from the padre, to a certain Rafaela Montijo in the City of Mexico. With reverent eyes, Miguel had gazed upon the beautiful face in the golden frame. The story of it was simple; for Padre Vicente did not tell him of the other Rafaela. Gently the priest had put the case in the young man's eager hand.

"Guard it well, hijo mío,” he had said, "that the owner may surely receive it. You could not go on a more sacred mission if you carried a message from the padre presidente himself."

His eyes had spoken more eloquently than his lips; but Miguel had laid that to the zeal of the Franciscan for loving his fellow man. He had accepted the trust loyally, but, as he rode south that morning, the picture meant no more to him personally than the caress of the breeze, or the sparkle of the little, blue