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446 the whole of the village lands, and he had bought Ysidro's house because it was the best; and so they would not get anything. They were utterly disheartened, broken-spirited.

In his sympathy for them, Felipe almost forgot his own distresses. “Where are you going?” he asked of several.

“Who knows, Señor?” was their reply. “Where can we go? There is no place.”

When, in reply to his questions in regard to Alessandro's wife, Felipe heard her spoken of as “Majella,” his perplexity deepened. Finally he asked if no one had ever heard the name Ramona.

“Never.”

What could it mean? Could it be possible that this was another Alessandro than the one of whom he was in search? Felipe bethought himself of a possible marriage-record. Did they know where Alessandro had married this wife of his, of whom every word they spoke seemed both like and unlike Ramona?

Yes. It was in San Diego they had been married, by Father Gaspara.

Hoping against hope, the baffled Felipe rode on to San Diego; and here, as ill-luck would have it, he found, not Father Gaspara, who would at his first word have understood all, but a young Irish priest, who had only just come to be Father Gaspara's assistant. Father Gaspara was away in the mountains, at Santa Ysabel. But the young assistant would do equally well, to examine the records. He was courteous and kind; brought out the tattered old book, and, looking over his shoulder, his breath coming fast with excitement and fear, there Felipe read, in Father Gaspara's hasty and blotted characters, the fatal entry of the names, “Alessandro Assis and Majella Fa—”

Heart-sick, Felipe went away. Most certainly Ramona would never have been married under any but