Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/244

 "You will show your friend the retreat," Pablo directed. "If there is nobody after you yet, there is nothing to fear, but the rabbit must know where to find its hole when the coyote comes."

Felipe led the way through a grove of live-oak and sycamore trees that bordered on Pablo's garden, into a cleared space a little distance behind the old man's house, where the crumbling walls of what must have been at one time an extensive homestead encumbered the ground. These ruins appeared to be of a day long past, their walls tumbled down, the frames gone from gaping windows and doors. Blackened ends of beams still held here and there in the walls, stood as evidence of the tragedy that had leveled this once consequential seat. Henderson was astonished when Felipe extended welcome with sweeping movement of his outstretched hand, saying:

"Gabriel, behold my ancestral walls."

"This was your home, Felipe?"

"Home, Gabriel. Here I was born, here my father and mother came from Spain, bride and groom, to join my grandfather, who had prepared this house to receive them. The soldiers of the revolution burned it after my father fled to Spain."

"It looks like an older ruin," said Gabriel, looking around with sad interest in the fallen strength of this once grand place. "But I see now it couldn't have been long ago, the trees that have come up between the walls are still small."