Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/154

 their supplication to unfeigned demand. The missions could not carry the load without falling soon into a state of exhaustion. A halt was called; the golden stream was suddenly and inexorably checked. This happened about the time of Juan Molinero's arrival at San Fernando. The withdrawal of the soldiers from the mission now was part of a plan of coercion to open the golden arteries again.

Padre Mateo talked of this as he stood with Juan Molinero in the mill the morning after Sergeant Olivera's visit to the kitchen. They had seen the soldiers ride away to the Pueblo de Los Angeles a little while before, each man with a pack-mule carrying his goods and possessions, accumulated here in this profitable lodgment which they were in no keen zest to leave.

Inside the shed that housed the simple machinery of the mill there was the pleasant smell of flint on flint as the millstones spun, warm streams of flour pouring into the bins in bountiful cascades. The miller was an old Mexican whose hair was almost as white as the flour, one who had come a young man to the mission of San Diego de Acalá, and had followed Padre Serra, founder of the missions, into the north. The marvel of this admirable mill was over him like the effect of a miracle. In the most prolific year of all the many years that he had fed the hoppers of mills driven by Indians tramping a wearisome circle at the end of a sweep, he had